A Winning Team

I love Kristoffer Polaha, so it pains me to say that the majority of this film was painful to watch. I don't want to pile on about the hair, but the combed forward look was less than flattering.

The basic story is about a professional soccer player named Emily Chen, she gets suspended from the team by her coach because of her unsportsmanlike conduct, unprofessional play and lack of team orientation. She goes to visit her brother an niece where she ends up helping the local coach Ian with her niece's soccer team.

I didn't care for the persona they created for Emily, super competitive and self absorbed. It made for very awkward tv. I want to emphasize that it wasn't the actress because she was beautiful and had some brilliant on screen romantic moments with Kristoffer Polaha. I can only assume that it was the direction. I suffered thru to the end so I could leave an honest review...but normally I would have bailed within the first 15 minutes, it was truly that bad.

Sorry to say this is not a recommendation from me.

6.3 stars.

First of all Polaha's hair is styled to look Asian maybe as a tribute to that culture, but it's unflattering. In fact it looks unkempt and sloppy. His character Ian is an odd mixture of carefree philanthropist and town do-gooder. Why is this man the coach of the soccer team, and where does he get all his money? His character and personality don't match his profession as a consultant and random benefactor of a small town in the middle of nowhere. Eventually the pieces start fitting into place, but the first confused hour was almost enough for me to delete 'Winning Team' and move on.

Emily (Hatta) comes to town because she was suspended from playing professional soccer for what appears to be the Chicago Red Stars, and as a side note it could be argued this movie is loosely based on the many troublemakers of professional soccer. She is visiting her in-laws while waiting to find out when she can return to the pros, and within a short time she literally runs into Ian and injures him in a friendly soccer game.

The story is not believable, several scenes are fragmented and incoherent and every time there is supposed to be a romantic spark between Polaha and Hatta, it's forced and awkward. The body language is wrong and the conversations are off, uncomfortable and clumsy. In addition there are several fragmented and random short segments that don't fit well into the story. It's obviously a rushed production. I have difficulty empathizing with either character, because the passion is not authentic. When Ian is seemingly devastated, it's premature because they haven't convincingly fallen in love or kissed and the relationship has no depth. After watching the entire film, I conclude that her lack of acting skills is what makes this a flop.

Back to the bumbles: supposedly Ian sprains his ankle, but he's up and about within a couple days, chopping wood, even participating in a three-legged race.

Two massive drawbacks of this movie are the immature dialogue and Hatta's inexperience. 'The Winning Team' does not showcase a winning team of cast members, is juvenile and pointless, and consists of nothing more than shoddy construction. Case in point, Emily's family: is that her brother in-law or her actual brother? The girl is her niece, we know that much, but we aren't sure how. His wife died some years ago, but Emily reminisces about her as if she was her sister. Apparently she was a professional soccer player and her best friend. We find out how she died too, but I had already checked out.

This whole film hinges on Ian's love for Emily and her inability to reciprocate, but it comes across more like he's a man in his forties trying to date a clueless 18 year old. Speaking of age, why does her brother look like he's twice her age? Weird movie.

For starters, the acting early on is terrible. A large part of that, but not all, is Nadia Hatta trying to be a stuck up celebrity soccer star. Part of me wondered if the actor just didn't want to play that ugly side of Emily. The soccer scenes in the beginning, which are supposed to be professional soccer, are amateur. The scene with just Emily and the coach is bad too.

As in so many movies of this genre, Emily eventually does a 180 in personality and becomes likeable, although in this movie it took a while. I don't know what the deal was with Kristoffer Polaha, but his hair was worse than any of the acting, especially in his first scene. I try not to complain about personal appearance, but when it looks like it is the makeup crew, I do call it out. In this case it was distracting. I consider him to be one of the more reliable Hallmark actors, but throughout this movie I wasn't really impressed.

Later scenes of high school soccer games are also terrible. Dribble the ball up slowly toward the goalie with no opposition and kick the ball slowly across the line. I guess they didn't have the budget, or probably the set, to do some live action full speed.

The conflict through ending is mostly a predictable copy of so many other of these movies where one of the leads had been taking a break from her regular life through most of the movie.

It has flaws, sure. But given Hallmark's trend as of late I expected to kinda hate it. But I don't. And I'm not shy about criticizing Hallmark these days so that says something.

His hair wasn't that bad despite the comments. It had good and bad moments but overall it worked for this character. The pacing, structure, and some acting were clunky at times but they've had much worse.

I actually liked the premise which shockingly they managed to balance. Neither lead had to be excessively torn down for the other to shine. They actually had two characters with strengths and weaknesses to highlight and overcome respectively. Actual character arcs for both.

I liked it, guys. And for not liking much out of Hallmark these days, I'll take it.

An over-aggressive soccer star is suspended and returns home, where she ends up assisting to coach her niece's team and conflicts with its somewhat hapless male coach. Kristoffer Polaha, usually great at portraying benevolent, a bit ironic, down-to-earth characters, appears excessively dejected and subdued in this role. Nadia Hatta is very convincing as unduly competitive, but shows no depth and fails to credibly project shades of a more complete or loving personality.

Somehow, the movie does not explain how these two characters, locked in their own antagonistic bubbles, find some chemistry and a way to love each other.

The idea of the story was nice and contained many elements of human and family values. The execution is bland and generic, which denies giving credit to the intent.

The soccer playing scenes, by the way, are very poorly done and only prove that all actresses, both young and adult, actually suck at this game. It could have been easy to hire a couple of real players to kick the ball once or twice.

Essentially the film is family-friendly, in no way offensive, and watchable. Yet, is no more than a feeble effort that falls quite short of its potential and the target.