12/15/09 - The U

The U (2009, 106 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1199479/

The last film I watch while actually at school this semester is actually a documentary. Part of ESPN's 30 for 30 series, this one seemed the most interesting so far.

The film chronicles the rise of the Miami Hurricanes football program in the 1980s into the late 1990s. It starts with when Howard Schnellenberger reinvigorated the program, continues through Jimmy Johnson's tenure and goes through Dennis Erickson's career and finishes right before the 2001 national title.

This is probably the first documentary I've seen in a really long time. It's hard to compare it to other movies for a couple reasons. The first resides in the above sentence: I hardly ever watch documentaries so I'm not familiar with them. The second is that it's hard to judge documentaries on standards that I have established for standard movies. Anyway, I'll try to review it as best as possible.

I really liked the whole subject of the documentary. I'm a fan of college football but I was unfortunate enough to not know of the Miami Hurricanes until the 2001 title year when they went undefeated. I was excited to see how everything really started for them and I felt that this part was handled pretty well. Schnellenberger comments on this time were naturally appropriate. Some of the other comments though I felt were unneeded. The musician Luther Campbell with his comments here made it seem like Miami was helping the entire black population in their war against the blacks. While the documentary clearly tries to show that Miami helped ease some of these tensions, Campbell (due to his ties and later allegations relating to the team) perhaps gives too much praise to the team. Another viewpoint would have helped here.

As we move to Jimmy Johnson's era, we get an abrupt change. The documentary didn't explore this change that much and what really happened. It does mention that Schnellenberger explored another football league that didn't pan out, but perhaps more talk on how Johnson really was selected would have helped. Then, the documentary seemed to leap through Johnson's tenure in bounds, exploring only a few high points and ignoring everything in between. Due to Johnson's apparently flamboyant style, more focus could have been done here. The portrayal of Johnson as he left the team also could have used some more light as the other side of the argument was essentially unexplored.

The third part of the movie focuses on Erickson's era and this one is skipped over even more than Johnson's. We get a few highlights and not much more. I never really felt like the comments provided by Erickson himself added anything to the history of the Miami Hurricanes and that was a shame. I'm hesitant to say that this entire portion of the documentary was unneeded since Miami won two titles under Erickson. But I felt that this segment was lacking in comparison to the other two.

Overall, I gave this film a 5/10. It's pretty enjoyable for a two hour-ish documentary with only a few lulls. I really think only making the documentary about Schnellenberger or Johnson or Erickson would have been better than trying to explore fifteen or so years of the program's history. As it stands, though, Billy Corben has directed a quality film on the resurrection of the Miami Hurricanes football team.