Director Niki Caro
Starring Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Ramiro Rodriguez
Rated PG
Score 3/6

Jim White moves his family after losing his last job as a football coach. He sees that some of the students are worth starting a cross country team and turns 7 students with no hope into one of the best cross country teams.

I am not overly familiar with director Niki Caro’s work, but for those of you who are interested she was the writer/director of the 2002 movie Whale Rider.
Sports movies are for the most part very predictable as soon as you walk into the movie theatre, download them or hire them from your friendly neighbourhood DVD store you pretty much have a clue as to what sort of movie that you are in for before it has even started. They usually deal with one of two things either a noble failure or some sort of success against all odds, or the movie would probably not have been made in the first place. Considering that this is a Disney movie McFarland deals with the latter and not the former.
Despite any predictability about the type of that I was in for and the fact that this movie was so much in Kevin Costner’s wheelhouse that he could have done the entire movie in his sleep and followed almost all of the story clichés that you would expect from a sports movie, McFarland was for the most part watchable.