The Longshots

This is a sports movie so, yes, emotions are milked and the unlikely happens, but Longshots is refreshingly free of the cloying happiness that infects most films in its genre.

Durst and writer Nick Santora, who's making his feature film debut, don't break new emotional ground or take risks. At the same time, they don't push too hard to solve characters' problems.

It includes some of the expected elements of any film from this genre, but without the usual Hollywood supercharging. It's not all pumped up with flash and phoniness.

Director Fred Durst (yes, the Limp Bizkit front man) and screenwriter Nick Santora pile on the schmaltz, but Cube and Palmer tackle the predictable drama with gusto.

Ice Cube has never been an even passable actor, and his previous efforts to make family films have ranged from uncomfortable to unwatchable. But The Longshots breaks the mold in a big way.

The picture is the umpteenth inspirational youth sports film, and like many of those, it's surprising how often filmmakers find a way to make the experience, despite the formulaic nature, one of inspiration.

While the performances have an easy grace, it’s Palmer’s effortlessness that allows Longshots to make a female quarterback seem anything but a long shot.

The Longshots is a likable enough Cinderella story, one whose heart is clearly in the right place, even if it winds up on its sleeve once too often.

The Longshots (awful title, guys) plays every instrument in the cliché orchestra, but it at least plays them well, and its characters are likable enough to settle in with for a pleasant hour and a half.

If not a much-needed reinvention of the hackneyed genre, credit nonetheless goes to The Longshots for at least toning down the over-processed syrup and stale clichés that normally accompany such stories.

It's all relatively harmless but populated with predictable moments and stock characters -- the truth-telling minister, the mean-teen girls, the irrepressible old codgers.

Fred Durst's directorial debut includes just about every cliche in the local-sports-team-makes-good playbook. But Durst keeps the story rooted in the desperation of a dying town, and that gives this formulaic family fare a slight edge.

The Longshots is notable mainly for its complete lack of edge. There's nothing about the film's workmanlike, achingly conventional direction that says "Fred Durst." Thank God.

It is unabashedly sentimental and, at times sincerely touching, mainly when Ice Cube and Palmer are alone together on the screen.

Durst deftly avoids the traps of easy sentimentality and contrived jokiness by grabbing his two lead actors and holding on for dear life, knowing that the second their characters become caricatures is the second his movie becomes disposable.

Keke Palmer, of the similarly motivational Akeelah and the Bee, steps comfortably into Plummer's cleats. She is a headstrong and vulnerable young actress capable of being moody in one scene and fiery in the next.

The Longshots scores big as a funny and inspiring true story about Pop Warner’s first and only girl quarterback.

This genuinely affecting movie, based on a true story, has a heart as big as a football field even when its plot points are telegraphed.

The Longshots is well-made enough to drive its point home: Girls, you can grow up to do anything, including be directed in movies by a man who once thought you couldn't do much.

Despite its good intentions, in the end, this Bizkit goes limp.

It leaves you feeling buoyed about the infinite possibilities for youngsters with athletic talent. But to arrive at that end, you must endure numerous clunky passages and a level of overacting more suitable for the soaps.

It's as generic as its tell-nothing title, but nobody expects an underdog-sports movie to blaze new trail.

Saddled with such a predictable plot and script, Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, moonlighting as movie director, delivers a mildly diverting tale.

Former Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst directs in a surprisingly dull fashion, and most of the characters, including Jasmine's mother and father, are numbingly one-dimensional.

Despite a savvy ad campaign that might indicate otherwise, The Longshots is an "inspirational drama," not a laugh-riot.

Durst doesn’t accomplish much with this familiar plotline and he doesn’t distinguish himself as a director.

After a summer of bigger-than-big blockbusters, it's almost reassuring to watch a film that owns up to its familiar formulas without aspiring to more than modest, facile entertainment.

The Longshots bends over backwards to follow every play in the book. One ounce of conflict or on-field exhilaration might perk things up, but Durst avoids tension like it's a stalker who snuck onto a music video set.

The Longshots is a certifiable crowd pleaser, an agreeable variation on the kid sports movie formula whose family-friendly messages outweigh its corny over familiarity.

Based on the real-life of Jasmine Plummer, this story ought to have all the heart and drama needed, but the onscreen version is too sloppy to even get the clichés right.

It's almost always rewarding to watch an underdog triumph -- what else could explain why movies exactly like this keep being made? -- but Longshots is one underdog that's hard to love and harder still to champion.