12 Mighty Orphans

Speaking of Fort Worth, there's a new movie out called 12 Mighty Orphans. Based on a book about the Mighty Mites, a Depression-era football team from an orphanage, this film opened in Texas first, but will expand nationwide soon. It's your typical inspiring sports movie about underdogs. Still, I couldn't resist the local connection, and if you go, you will certainly hear about UIL sports, towns in DFW, and famous Texans such as Amon Carter. There's also mention of FDR being a fan of the team. Luke Wilson plays Rusty Russell, a teacher and a football coach for the Masonic home for orphans, and he leads his team to success.

There's a lot of fictionalization, though the Fort Worth Star Telegram review claims that some of the facts are true. Still, the movie compresses about a decade of time into one 1938 season, and it ramps up the drama with a villain. The movie shows a 17-year old Hardy Brown coming to the orphanage right after witnessing his father being murdered, but in real life he witnessed this murder when he was 4 years old, not a teenager. That's a huge difference, and no more details are given about this trauma. And alas, this movie focuses mostly on the white members of the team while the darker skinned Hispanic team members stay in the background with little dialogue. I suppose the filmmakers didn't even want to address issues about race and how football would have been segregated at least black vs. white in the 1930s. I suppose that would dilute their feel-good movie drama.

But Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights also suffers a similar problem of having mostly light skinned actors starring, while relegating darker skinned cast to background roles. Still, I was impressed by the huge dance numbers, along with a sequence set at the community pool, looking like old Busby Berkeley musical numbers. I did like the romance between Benny and Nina, and Stephanie Beatriz has a minor part at the hair salon. I didn't really care for the frame device of Usnavi narrating the story to a bunch of kids including his daughter.