Little Giants

Jeff’s take

When it comes to this movie, I had mixed emotions. There were some aspects of it that I admired while others I could have done without. After initially viewing the trailer, I found that it definitely wouldn't be the first movie I would watch if given the chance. I have never really been that much of a sports guy though I figured this movie would resemble the movie "The Mighty Ducks." It basically follows the same premise with a different sport being played. Instead of hockey, it was football in this case. Everything else was the same in my eyes. Both movies featured sports teams with little experience getting clobbered at first and having to work their way up the ranks with help from their coach and others throughout the movie, ETC. To be honest, I really didn't like "The Mighty Ducks," as I simply don't care about sports. However, this movie is slightly different in the sense that there were actors in the movie that saved it from being a complete failure. Particularly I was a fan of Ed O Neill even though he was positioned as the villain of the movie. I was drawn to this movie by him being in it. A couple of years ago, I started watching the sitcom "Married With Children" and this was basically my introduction to him. It was nice to see him in a different role though I noticed that in certain scenes of this movie, he had dialogue that mirrored his character in the show even though this was very brief. Also, Rick Moranis was a good actor as well. I first saw him in the movie "Honey I Shrunk The Kids." I was drawn to this movie through his casting as well. To put it simple, the main cast of this movie brought back nostalgia for me and therefore, this was one of the movie's good points.

Having said that, I cannot ignore the chauvinistic comments and the gender sensitive bullying that occurred throughout this movie. I have always believed that no particular job should be just for men or women to do. Gender equality is something I truly believe should apply in every situation. There's nothing one gender can do better than the other. Maybe some jobs may be easier for one gender over the other but this doesn't mean that everybody can't try. I really don't think it's fair to believe that one gender can't succeed at a task that the other gender believes should only be done by them and can only be accomplished by them. I couldn't believe what I was seeing during those scenes and I couldn't figure out why they would allow that topic to be featured in a children's movie meant to impart the message that they can do anything.

This film also features bullying scenes which depict a girl being treated as if she is a boy. This is absolutely ridiculous for a girl to be treated like that. First of all, without giving away too much information for those who haven't seen this movie yet, she turned out to be better than any player on the team and kept them from losing by a considerable margin. To me, this proves that she is good enough to be on the team so the bullying related to her being a valuable player or not shouldn't exist.

Unfortunately, the bad points outweigh the good points in terms of this movie's final review. There's just too many of them to ignore and they're really bad ones if I'm being honest. They depict very serious topics. Ones that I personally would have gotten in trouble as a kid for saying to anybody, (that they're not good, that a girl looks like a boy,) ETC. Therefore, this is one of those movies that will be saved from complete failure by the presence of the main cast. It was very disappointing to me that certain scenes in this movie weren't removed. I'm hoping my next review will be better.

Jeff O meter final score: 5 out of 10