A Winning Team

The most common problem with movies or TV series is a poor script and that's the main problem here. It's not an exciting script and even the actors don't find it exciting. It's boring, football/soccer can be exciting even in light shows like Ted Lasso. Nadia Hatta's mopey suspended player act just doesn't do it, miscasting. Kris Polaha is good, but he's better acting in the mystery genre. The rest of the cast is so-so, nothing spectacular.

It's hard to pull off realistic sports plays unless the cinematography and editing are good, this is low budget. Details aren't always Hallmark's forte, of course they might have just purchased this from a production company.

Obviously I expect pro sports players to be competitive, but it's just too much of it here. Whilst this makes for a different storyline in some ways, which is great, I just didn't enjoy the lead's perspective or behaviour to watch this movie much. The male lead is much more relatable - enjoyment and community is what matters, not the win. As with many of these movies, I'm not entirely convinced by the actor / character ages, these show producers really need to write more movies for 40+ now the actors are older. On the upside, this is a cross-generation movie going from teens to grandparent age.

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.

In general, the polite term for Hallmark films, in my case, was "nice". A Winning Team is ...eccentric. For a very forced romance between outgoing/ carefree trainer, less interested by the victory of team and too ambitious young soccer player , for the unrealistic end and for the brother of soccer player lady who is more indifferent or only emotional woody or Peter Pan syndrome example .

Sure, Kristopher Polaha and Nadia Hatta. A nice couple but, maybe, only on paper.

Because the film , looking for be original, offers strange to biyarre moral lessons .

Indeed, being myself carefree, I see with obvious sympathy Ian . But a Hallmark film, I suppose, offers some examples of ideal people in skin of modern fairy tale.

So, reasonable to eccentric sounds fair to define it.