Michael & Liz are Bloggable

Is anyone really all that excited to see this movie? It can't be anything more than mediocre when the ending is so set in stone. Spoiler Alert: The 1980 USA Hockey Team wins the gold medal. But I'm not one to care whether or not I know the ending based on my record of ruining movies for pretty much everyone I know, so I watched it anyway.

The problems I had with Miracle far out weight the redeeming qualities. There's really only one storyline to the movie and everything else was just fluff: a really mean and mysterious coach takes on a team of young underacheivers. Try and get anything else from the movie and you'll just get confused.

I watched a whole movie about a hockey team and I couldn't put one name to one face outside of the coach. The team was all just a bunch of forgettable white guys with long hair who liked to use words that ended in "oot". The climax of the movie was one of the USA players scoring a goal and I have no idea which one it was. Their nemesis, the Russian hockey team, might as well have all been from the Ivan Drago family (Rocky IV reference), they were tall, strong, and can't talk. A side plot was about how the big bad mean coach was defying the olympic officials with his coaching style, but it was extremely weak. It was just one guy saying "I'm backing you coach, you better know what you're doing".

Rudy, Cinderella Man, and Cool Runnings are all awesome. I'm a sucker for feel good sports movies, and this one certainly applies. The difference here though, was at the end, I didn't really care about the people involved.

Those are just a few of my beefs. I feel like (and I feel this way far too often after movies) they decided that the USA hockey team's triumph in 1980 would make a good movie, and then just filled in the beginning and middle with whatever would keep you interested. I guess they achieved their goal, I watched the whole thing.

Satisfaction Rating: Popcorn. You knew what you were getting into and it's always just OK.