Movie Review: My All American – Painfully Slow and Aimless with No Real Character Development

My All American Screen Grab Movie Review

I don’t like sports, so I frequently see sports movies go terribly wrong. However, that doesn’t mean I hate all sports movies. I dug Any Given Sunday. I loved Rudy. There were a lot of sports movies that I enjoyed very much.

This was not one of them.

My All American is based on a true story and is written by the same person who wrote “Rudy”. In this one Freddie Steinmark (Finn Wittrock) is a dude who’s just a bit too little for football, but his love of the game leads him to getting a spot on the Longhorns at the University of Texas in the late 1960s. The film goes with the cliché of having Coach Darrel Royal (Aaron Eckhart, in some embarrassingly bad old person makeup) telling the tale of Freddie to a reporter who apparently didn’t realize this movie had already been written and done better in Rudy.

This is a movie that panders to the conservatives, and even they will take it with a grain of salt. Freddie is just a little too perfect to be human, the scenes of family are just a bit too idyllic to be real. When someone mentions New York and the Coach says “Aw hell, I’ve never liked those big cities,” I half expected him to jam a corncob pipe into his mouth, it was so fake and hokey.

My All American Screen Grab 2 Movie Review

There’s just irritating, over the top scene after irritating over the top scene of Freddie skipping around farting rainbows and sprinkling sunshine wherever he goes. At least Rudy had some edge.

Freddie is a total square. He’s too damn intense about everything. Everything is just friggen great! Whether he’s talking to his best girl or tying his shoes, he always gives 110%!

He was nauseating.

I feel bad saying this because the movie is supposedly based on a real guy, but honestly, the Freddie in this movie isn’t real. He was Dudley Friggen Do-Right with and extra dose of Christian Conservatism.

My All American Screen Grab 3 Movie Review

It’s amazing to me, and a credit to Eckhart as an actor, that he was able to keep a straight face as the coach spewed out countrified statement after countrified statement. Here’s some of my favas.

“You run like you got minnows in your pants!” What does that even friggen mean? Was he scratching his butt? Did he pee himself? It doesn’t make a lick of sense and no one in the history of time has used that phrase in any seriousness, because whoever heard it would just turn around and ask the same question.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Next “I fell in love with her faster than a hiccup.” Yeah, because that’s what a girl wants to hear from the man who says he’s in love with her. She wants to hear she reminds him of an involuntary spasm in his diaphragm.

It was painfully slow, aimless and no character development in a movie I couldn’t care less about. It was pretty darn bad. No joke. I hated it like I hate hiccups.

WE GAVE IT: 2 Stars – Watch the Official Trailer and Official Movie Poster below!

2 Stars

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My All American Official Moive Poster