'McFarland, USA': Hispanic high schoolers running for their lives

There are good things to say about the inspirational Disney sports film McFarland, USA, starting with its up-from-the-scrap-heap story, which happens to be true.

In 1987, a group of Latino high schoolers in McFarland, Calif., sons of crop pickers and day laborers, comes together under a new coach to compete in track. The cross-country underdogs win the state championship, beating out elite schools and kicking off a decades-long victory streak for the team sprung from one of California's most economically depressed communities.

Of course, the coach who leads the fledgling McFarland Cougars has his own hurdles to leap. Jim White (Kevin Costner) was fired from his last job after he hit his quarterback in the face with a shoe. He's had run-ins with students and administrators at other schools, too. The life science/phys-ed position at McFarland High might be the hot-headed educator's last shot.

When the Whites - Maria Bello is the wife, Homeland's Morgan Saylor the sulky teen, Elsie Fisher the younger sis - pull into town, you can see the fear in their eyes. Lowriders bounce down the main street, taquerias and corner markets with signs in Spanish are everywhere, roosters crow in backyards. The white-bread family from Boise are this close to pulling a U-turn with their U-Haul.

That's the other really good thing about McFarland, USA. Niki Caro, director of Whale Rider and North Country, captures the cultural spirit of this San Joaquin Valley town and its predominantly Hispanic population without the patronizing tone often heard when Hollywood explores ethnic and economic lifestyles different from its own.

Many of the kids cast in the film come from McFarland and the surrounding area; the music rocks with a hearty Latin beat (Antonio Pinto, Mongo Santamaria, Los Tigres del Norte), and the film (mostly) skirts the cliches of gangbangers and hip-twitching mamacitas. The lives of these parents and kids - up before dawn and off to the fields, picking almonds and fruit - are depicted with realism and respect.

If you want to believe the real Coach White was so cash-starved he had to use a wind-up kitchen timer instead of a stopwatch to clock his students - well, who knows, maybe the opening credits' "based on a true story" claim extends to the corniest of the movie's scenarios, too?

As White, Costner delivers his lines in that patented pancake-flat style. It's kind of remarkable to see how far that dogged ordinariness has taken him, and how adaptable it is to different genres. (Last year, it was a pair of spy thrillers and an NFL draft-day drama; this year, the race-themed family drama Black or White.)

For a film directed by a woman, however, McFarland, USA is almost shocking in how underwritten and undeveloped the central female role - Bello's Cheryl White - is. For actresses lamenting the dearth of meaty, meaningful parts in today's Hollywood, here's Exhibit A. For the longest time in the film, it's not even clear whether Cheryl has a job (she doesn't). All we get are a couple of worried conversations about the family's future, a reproachful scowl when Jim forgets to pick up the birthday cake for their daughter, and a visit to a local beauty salon where Cheryl bonds with the proprietress, Lupe (Martha Higareda).

The spousal sidekick here is actually insulting - to a talented actress, and to the audience watching her walk around with nothing to do.

Sure, this isn't the wife's story. It's the story of six fleet-footed young men overcoming bias and the burden of poverty, and of the mentor who encourages them. And even when it stumbles, McFarland, USA runs the distance.

Directed by Niki Caro. With Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Ramiro Rodriguez, Carlos Pratts, Morgan Saylor. Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures.

Running time: 2 hours, 8 mins.

Parent's guide: PG (violence, ethnic slurs, adult themes).

Playing at: area theaters.EndText