All Football Movies are Chick Flicks

The title of today's post is brought to you by Vince. For "Two Buck Tuesday" I went to see the movie "Invincible" with Mark Wahlberg. (I didn't go to the movie with Mark [sigh]; he's in the movie.) It is a "medium-sized" movie: warm, funny, noble, predictable. Not the kind of movie that would inspire you to change the world, but also not the kind of movie where you want your two hours back. It's loosely the story of Vince Papale and the Philadelphia Eagles of 1975 (loved that 70's soundtrack). When I got home, my Vince was still doing homework in the exact same position on the sofa. I felt a little guilty that I'd been living it up at the movies and here he was struggling through Spanish. I tried to console him with, "It was a chick flick."

That's when he came out with one of those surprising insights that still catch me off guard. He's been doing this since 5th grade; you'd think I'd be used to it by now. In that casual, off-hand way that is second nature to teenagers, the tone that says everybody-but-you-already-knows-this, he drawled, "All football movies are chick flicks."

Maybe he's right. How many football movies have you seen that were Cinderella stories? They just change the shoes -- the rest is all still there: the love story subplot, the wicked linebackers, the downtrodden central character with integrity and heart, the magical unbelievable transformation. The sports movies that aren't patterned after fairy tales are tear-jerkers -- Brian's Song, Pride of the Yankees, Field of Dreams.

It's a marketing ploy. Disguise a sweet, tender story with a little gladiator behavior and you've got a movie for the whole family.