The Miracle Season

The Miracle Season

Starring Helen Hunt, William Hurt, Erin Moriarty, Danika Yarosh

Directed by Sean McNamara

The Story:
In 2010, the West High Trojan girls volleyball team became national champions, due in large part to their energetic, overly-friendly captain Caroline "Line" Found (Danika Yarosh).  She leads the team to unity and strength through her bubbly personality and caring attitude, and her best friend Kelly (Erin Moriarty) is all the better for the friendship.

As their senior year begins, the girls anticipate another win, and so does their no-nonsense coach, Kathy "Brez" Bresnahan (Helen Hunt).  It looks like the girls could do the impossible and win another championship back-to-back, until Line is tragically killed in a moped accident.

The rest of the girls are so down and depressed they can't even pick up a volleyball, and they begin forfeiting matches.  Brez - all business on the outside, yet slowly breaking apart on the inside - turns to Kelly to rally the girls together again and play, but even Kelly's heart isn't in it anymore.  Then they talk about how Line would want things to go, and the girls come together and begin winning matches for Line.  Soon they find the impossible - winning fifteen matches in a row - is possible, and the girls once again find themselves at the national championships, prepared to win it all for Line.

The Synopsis:
The emotions run full and deep in "The Miracle Season," a film designed to develop a rise out of you.  You feel the emotions through the cast, the tension and heartbreak, and it affects you deeply.  While that's typically a good thing - you generally want to feel real emotions for characters - there's a sense of manipulation going on throughout, as the film seems designed for you to feel bad.

The beginning of the film is actually its strongest, when we meet Line in all her innocent, good-girl glory.  Danika Yarosh dominates the screen as the always bubbly, always optimistic, always entertaining popular girl who's not your typical popular girl - she doesn't make fun of other people, doesn't insult them, and doesn't turn her nose down to them; in fact, she opens her arms wide for anyone and accepts everyone as they are.  Basically, she's the second coming of Mother Teresa (I know it sounds harsh, considering Line was a real person, but here that's how she's depicted).  Her character is shown to be the light of the team and the soul of the town, so her death makes an even bigger impact than if she was just an ordinary girl.

After her death, you really do feel the punch, since we watched her for thirty minutes being all happy and heartfelt (she even throws a barn party where there's no drinking, no suggestive dancing, and even her father performs magic tricks - not things you'd find at a typical teenage party, unless maybe in Iowa).  You wonder - as do the girls - how life can even go on without her.  This is where the film starts falling apart, with the middle.  The most emotional scenes - the girls finding out about her death, the wake, and the gut-punch William Hurt's character (Line's father Ernie) receives after her death should be rallying points for the tears, but somehow you find yourself bereft of crying at these moments, because they pass as quickly as Wikipedia explanations.  Director Sean McNamara saved the tears for the beginning and the end, while the middle you're just wondering what's going on.

The editing here doesn't do the film any favors, as you don't even know how long time has passed before the girls start even playing again.  It could've been days, or weeks (I'm assuming days because I doubt volleyball matches would be so long in-between), but there's not a definitive answer.  Scenes move from one to another without rhyme or reason (there's a particular scene where Kelly and her new boyfriend - played by Burkely Duffield but somehow doesn't even have a name...seriously, even on imdb.com there's no character name associated with the actor) apologizes for being distant and unavailable, and we wonder 1) why we should care, and 2) when did that even happen?  Their relationship is so glossed over and unimportant we wonder why it was even introduced in the first place.  Traveling on that trail, even their relationship was wholesome and family-friendly - barely even a kiss let alone anything else - that also adds to the overly sweet nature of the film.

Speaking of Kelly, Erin Moriarty does an admirable job trying to play a wooden, one-dimensional character as vibrantly as she could, but not even she could muster enough emotion to make you care for her.  The girls in general are stock characters of volleyball players who are intercut with action-packed volleyball games (intense use of slow motion, making the ball look like a bullet whizzing over the net), and - again, speaking of the sickeningly sweetness of this film - hardly speak a bitter word to anyone (save for one scene, but even that seems interjected for no good reason and has no real denouement), and you just want to root for them all because they're so amazing at being so amazing.

The vets of the film are the ones who hold the most emotional weight, as Oscar-winner Helen Hunt and Oscar-winner William Hurt hold the brunt of the emotional moments, and both deliver with the class and professionalism of veteran actors who - although probably know they're starring a film lower than their caliber - still give everything they got.  William Hurt plays Line's father, who suffers one emotional turmoil after another, and you begin to wonder how a man can even go on, and then you remember this actually happened and you feel even more emotion for Hurt's character.  Helen Hunt plays the stern volleyball coach who holds in her emotions and is the rock for the girls - and also a major point of contention - as she tries to bring them together to win again.  Yet, even though she remains stoic on the outside, she's falling apart on the inside.  When the inside bubbles out, Hunt releases a cavalcade of emotion that again brings a tear to your eye as well.

The ending of the film is predictable (its obviously not a spoiler since the title itself represents a "miracle"), and brings the emotions to full circle - there's happiness, unity, togetherness, and as represented throughout the film, the spirit of Line is still alive and well.

The Summary:
With a strong beginning, "The Miracle Season" looked to be a miracle in itself, but due to manipulative emotion-making and poor editing, the film muddies into a generic feel-good, feel-bad film.

The Score: C+