Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars.
About a month ago I saw the trailer for Spirit of the Game advertised on Facebook. I watched, fascinated. A Mormon missionary story and sports movie in one, based on a true story about the Mormon Yankees in Australia.
The Mormon Yankees was a basketball team of Mormon missionaries who helped train the Australian Olympic basketball team during the 1950's. The team was so strong the Olympic committee approached the Mormon Yankees to play exposition games against other basketball Olympic teams from many nations.
A really cool missionary story I had never heard about!
The comments section under the Facebook trailer was filled with many stories other users posted about their fathers or grandfathers who played on the team. Or how their family joined the church in Australia thanks to the Mormon Yankees. The team was such a positive influence in Australia that the LDS church tripled in size between 1955-1960.
When October 7th approached I was excited to see the movie, and I went on the Cinemark website to get the times, only to notice that Mormon Yankees wasn't playing anywhere. After a couple of days I realized Mormon Yankees wasn't the name of the movie, Spirit of the Game was. This is the first mistake the movie makes, choosing a wrong movie title. Search Mormon Yankees and many articles about a movie being made about this basketball team pop up, "Spirit of the Game" not mentioned. Searching Spirit of the Game yields Mormon Yankee results. This movie should have been titled Mormon Yankees.
That aside, I did enjoy Spirit of the Game. It's an uplifting movie. Unfortunately the story telling is very clunky. There's an unnecessary opening scene where someone gets a call that someone else has died, only I don't remember who died, and there was no follow up to this first scene. Overall the scene transitions are rough. Acting in parts are rough as well.
I left the movie theater uplifted. Spirit of the Game is not a Mormon Movie classic--Best Two Years is still my favorite--I'm still glad I saw it. The story behind the Mormon Yankees is worth telling, though I wish it was better done.
MPAA: Rated PG for mild thematic elements.
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