'The Beautiful Game' review: Bill Nighy soccer drama doomed by sports-movie clichés

WHAT IT'S ABOUT “The Beautiful Game” dramatizes the story of the Homeless World Cup, a real global soccer tournament geared toward helping people rebound after experiencing homelessness.

It does so through the prism of a fictionalized English squad, coached by Mal (Bill Nighy), a onetime professional scout, and starring Vinny (Micheal Ward), a former pro player now fallen on hard times.

The English team joins the annual competition in Rome, where opponents include the United States, South Africa and Japan, all of whom have characters with their own story arcs in this movie from director Thea Sharrock (“The One and Only Ivan”) and screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce (“Millions”).

MY SAY The movie delivers the inspirational sports movie goods. It offers personal struggles, journeys toward redemption, plenty of game action, the coach who does all he can to help his team and help himself, and more.

There's hardly anything in “The Beautiful Game” that audiences have not seen a thousand times before. And that's unfortunate, because the Homeless World Cup has dramatic potential that transcends the underdog story archetype.

The fact that this tournament not only really exists, but has impacted a lot of people, makes it a fine subject for a movie. It says something consequential about how the world community can collectively rally to combat homelessness, and the power of sports to provide a measure of hope and healing. 

“The Beautiful Game” does not wholly neglect the bigger picture. The story of a team member taking methadone because of a heroin addiction resonates well beyond the soccer field, while Nighy smartly plays Mal as a man concerned primarily with the well-being of his players, and not competitive success.

But a genuine, truthful telling requires something more than the expected clichés, dolloped with feel-good archetypes, all sanitized and streamlined to the point where the movie plays as family friendly, but less than honest.

The picture seems to be forever holding itself back.

The soccer itself takes place on a short field, a chaotic blur of quick cuts and goals that can be hard to follow. These movies often overestimate the extent to which the audience cares  who wins or loses, but this one really overdoes it, to the point where we're stuck watching games between teams we don't care about, while the English players sit in the stands.

The stories that have brought so many of these players to this tournament in Rome get shortchanged. We know Vinny once played for West Ham United, the English Premier League franchise, and that he has fallen on hard enough times that he lives in his car. But we don't ever feel the pain or the heartbreak or the struggle. The rest of the players get a surface-level scan of their backstories and that's about it.

“The Beautiful Game” has little time to go toward where it really should, because the requirements of the sports movie formula underpinning the story won't allow for it.

BOTTOM LINE It's run-of-the-mill when it could have been something much more.