Opens September 29, 2000

"What's good for football is what's good for America" - that might be the cheer for Remember the Titans, a seasonal charmer starring Denzel Washington as a square-jawed football coach who not only leads his high-school team to the Virginia state title but paves the way for racial harmony back in the early '70s. You don't have to be a natty-dressing ESPN wisecracker to appreciate the way that sports can generate harmony among different types, in this case between blacks and whites, but when moolah-meister Jerry Bruckheimer enters the film fray with a movie that has some social message to it, and teams with Disney, no less, you know that there's going to be some unusual play calling in the storyline. Unabashedly rosy, it's history told through the prism of generic movie formulas, and, not surprisingly it's an altogether comfy look at one of the edgiest periods in recent racial history, set on the heels of the protests of the'60s and early '70s.

In this football-as-sociology lesson, Washington stars as coach Herman Boone who is brought in to coach at an Alexandria Virginia high-school football powerhouse via the ministrations of the local school board, ordered to integrate against their wishes. Boone is a very decent sort from North Carolina with impeccable credentials and a history of being passed up for the big job because of his race. The coach he's replacing is somewhat of an area legend, Bill Yoast (Bill Patton) who is a candidate for the football-crazy area's high-school hall of fame. In football jargon, new coach Boone is facing a fourth-and-long: If he loses a game, the board will yank him, and he's got no financial safety net. In addition, he not only has to coach a new team he's not familiar with, he's got to build it from not just the ground up but from way down. For the first time in the school's history, blacks (this was before "African American" came into the lexicon) would be bussed to the school and, thus, what was once an all-white high school and an all-white football team would now include blacks.

Centering the story around the Bear Bryant-style football boot camp that coach Boone shuttles the team off to before the start of the school year, the players butt heads on the field and in the dorms, as Boone and Yoast try to mold them into a working-unit and a harmonious team. Invariably, there are scuffles and misunderstandings between the races, but in this good-intentioned scenario a deus ex machina enters the storyline in the form of a good-humored fat white boy (a latter-day John Candy) who, like the blacks, is also new to the school. He immediately tromps right into the midst of the blacks and befriends them. He's the bridge that opens things up between the, essentially, two parts to this team. Once the fat boy sings Temptations songs, the game is, on the whole, over as we see the two sides coming to know, understand and appreciate each other.

As you'd expect in a Jerry Bruckheimer film - he's the auteur not those who happen to write or direct his formulaic blockbusters - there's a blend of proven generic pieces. At the core of Titan's, there's a black-and-white, Mel and Danny-ish, battling buddy duo, albeit not as chummy. The plot calling also weaves downfield with the time-proven formula of the gritty-little-underdog against the old established powers; in this case, the team made up of diverse elements pulling together to beat the perennial champions. Throw in kicks from Karate Kid, late rallies from Bad News Bears ,goals from the Ducks, as well as just about every trick, dramatic play ever run in a sports movie, and you've got Titans.

As per a sports movie, the arc is predictable. The quest here is winning the state championship, and as Hitchcock invented a "McGuffin" to signify the thing that the hero was striving to recover or achieve, you could simply say that the racial situation here is the McBruckheimer namely the undercoat of social significance that spawned this story to give it a new and added dimension. That's not necessarily to denigrate the social-relevance of this film: Benign, good-intentioned and roughly thirty years after the fact, it's message of respecting people based not on race but on personal qualities is laudable. It's not unlikely that this gridiron, pop-sociology will do more good for race relations than all the edgy, small films about race that preach to the sanctimonious choir of cineastes at film festivals all over resort-land America.

Plus, Titans is sleek in storyline as a wide receiver and punctuated by a lot of crisp, helmet-jarring action. It runs its story patterns with just the right guys. The casting is perfect, from head coach to end of the bench: Washington brings a no-nonsense swagger to his role as kind of a high-school Vince Lombardi, a stern disciplinarian who doesn't tolerate losing. Squeaky clean, even by the standards of the type of roles Washington has played in the past, the coach has only one fault, the admirable one of trying too hard; plus, as per the script, he's a bit of a Woody Hayes/Bo Schembechler type when it comes to his ultra-conservative play calling. Based on his performance, you could plug Washington into any program right now and he'd coach a winner.

As the white coach, Bill Patton drills a well-rounded portrait of a decent man who, at the time when he comes closest to realizing his lifelong dream, has it intercepted by a social/political situation he had nothing to do with creating. It's a strong and contained performance and, well, the only thing distracting is that Patton looks so much like George W. Bush that it's hard to concentrate at times, thinking Dubya has taken to appearing in Hollywood movies, in addition to the Presidential duels with Gore on Oprah.

There are also a lot of strong performances from the teenaged players, on both sides of the ball, particularly Ethan Suplee as a loosey-goosey, Motown-wailing charmer. A huge boo, however, for the annoying and altogether grating performance of young Hayden Panettiere as Yoast's preococious, mouthy, and all-knowing daughter. In her defense, the part is such an obvious artifice that the movie would be improved considerably if nearly every scene of her shrill pontifications were deleted. Fifteen yards against he screenwriter for "piling on."

In general, however, credit scribe Gregory Allen Howard for conducting a generally winning story drive, mixing his serious scenes with humorous cutbacks and crowd-pleasing, personal triumphs. Overall, the story doesn't show its "significance" or sociological seams, a credit to Boaz Yakin's straightforward direction and the big lift of the soundtrack, including such pop anthems as Ain't Too Proud to Beg and Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye which, most aptly, cross divisional lines.