A father-daughter story as much as a sports drama, Gracie (Picturehouse) uses real-life events from actress Elisabeth Shue's family in 1970s' New Jersey in an inspirational movie about pursuing both literal and figurative goals.
In suburban South Orange, N.J., in 1978, teenager Gracie Bowen (Carly Schroeder) is the lone girl amid three brothers. Their father, Bryan (Dermot Mulroney), a moving man, had been a college sports star, and now his boys all live to play soccer. Eldest son Johnny (Jesse Lee Soffer), the pride of the Columbia High School Cougars, is killed one rainy night in a car accident.
Gracie takes it particularly hard, and declares she wants to play soccer on the boys' varsity team. The school board opposes the notion. Even the newly passed Title IX, the federal regulation giving girls equal access to school sports, only mandates the existence of boys' and girls' teams. Gracie's own dad doesn't think she has the right stuff.
Rebuffed, Gracie develops a pattern of bad behavior: riding with boys, stealing the family station wagon to skip school with her friend, Jena (Julia Garro), and necking with a college boy at the Jersey shore.
Her father and her school-nurse mother, Lindsay (Shue), are so despairing that Dad relents and agrees to coach her. He knows that if she's ever going to play with the boys, she's got to be at least as tough as they are.
Director Davis Guggenheim, Shue's Oscar-winning documentarian husband, wrote the story along with Shue's actor brother, Andrew, and a third writer. Refreshingly, he doesn't follow the standard sports-film trajectory. Gracie's path isn't smooth or direct, though it would be revealing too much to say more.
The climactic game proves all the more inspiring for its naturalism, aided by the overall movie's good sports choreography.
The film contains several instances of crude language, two instances of mild, clothed sexual groping, one bloody nose, a few puffs of underage smoking, and an underage teen at a disco. The film might be acceptable for older teens. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
