The Greatest Game Ever Played

Rating: B

One glance at this movie's preview will tell you that this is a typical Disney flick. There is a young person who is in a lower class of folks who is trying to move up in the world, and everyone else is holding him back including the higher class of folks, his "honest wage" father, and some other snotty kids. In true Disney fashion, it is his mother and some old mysterious guy that are behind him to help him ultimately succeed.

Having said that, director Bill Paxton does a very good job in building the suspense, and in developing the characters as much as he can in the restrictive Disney mold. Shia LeBeouf goes from digging holes to filling them with golf balls as Francis Ouimet, a child prodigy in golf that took on the big wigs at the 1913 US Open. Don't look into the history of this true story, for it will ruin the ending of the movie.

Not a bad, but a slightly forgettable movie that has a predictable ending, but does make up for it with wonderful shots of the golf rounds. It has a running time of close to 2 hours, where the majority of it is spent on the tournament itself. There is no real bad guy except for class warfare. The main message is that you can be or do whatever you want, no matter what society says. It's the American Dream told Disney style.