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Movie review: “Pride”
BY MAGGIE SCOTT
Someone going by the e-mail moniker of “cwesjenn” provided a succinct evaluation of the new drama, “Pride,” when he posted this on the IMDB entertainment web site: “I would have appreciated Bernie Mack’s humor coming out a little more to balance the crying.”
To be fair, the commentator liked the movie, but had difficulties with inaccuracies in some of the story’s details. And, “cwesjenn” should know, because he is an African American swimming coach who competed as a student about the same time as the setting of this movie, directed by Sunu Gonera.
Based on the experiences of Jim Ellis (Terrence Howard), “Pride” takes a cursory look at a sport not typically associated with African Americans.
Ellis lands in Philadelphia in 1974 looking for work. Rejected at an elite school for a swim coach position (he wouldn’t be able to “communicate properly with our students”), Ellis accepts an offer for work shutting down an aging city recreation center. Only the basketball court appears to be getting a workout at Marcus Foster Recreational Center, and it is in danger of having the nets taken down under orders of city bureaucrat, Sue Davis (Kimberly Elise); who, it seems, would rather see the kids hitting the books than hitting the hoops. Community apathy and neglect have nearly trashed the building, which shelters an equally apathetic, neglectful super.
Elston (Bernie Mac) is not happy about his upcoming displacement and grudgingly tolerates Ellis’s presence. Tolerance turns to teamwork when Ellis organizes the basketball pick up team into a swim team. The process isn’t easy, beginning with changing the kids’ minds about swim trunks being “panties.” Attitudes need some training after the kids try to laugh off a disastrous appearance at their first meet.
Ellis makes an impassioned point that he’s not interested in “spending time around those who don’t take their lives seriously.” Ellis and the kids also have to deal with the attitudes of a threatening drug dealer and a coach (Tom Arnold) who was “born messed up” when it comes to letting his white swimmers compete against black swimmers. The past threatens to sink the team right before a critical meet in Baltimore, when Ellis voluntarily puts himself on suspension after Sue discovers his arrest record.
It’s up to the team to prove that the PDR (Philadelphia Department of Recreation) motto, Pride, Determination and Resilience, is exactly what they are made of. To paraphrase Ellis, this movie’s legs get tired, but its heart does the rest. A Lionsgate release, rated PG for thematic material, language including some racial epithets and violence.
