Written
by Dean
Kish
Cast::
Denzel Washington, Will Patton, Donald Faison, Wood
Harris, Ryan Hurst
 Premise:
A semi-autobiographical story of a teen journalist
who goes on the road with a rock band. Uncool fifteen-year-old
William Miller (Patrick Fugit) is living every teenager's
dream. He's touring with Stillwater, an up-and-coming
rock band featuring lead singer Jeff Bebe (Jason Lee)
and charismatic lead guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy
Crudup), and writing about it for ROLLING STONE magazine,
whose editors are unaware of his young age. Though Miller's
mentor, legendary rock critic Lester Bangs--portrayed
with humor and heart by Philip Seymour Hoffman--cautions
him not to befriend the musicians, Miller takes it a
step further and befriends both the band and the Band-Aids--the
girls that hang around with the band because they love
their music.
Overall
Rating: 
(out of 4)
Rated
PG for thematic elements and some language.
Super
producer Jerry Bruckheimer teams with Walt Disney pictures
for a true story about integration of African Americans
into the white school system during the early seventies.
Leading the way is a very proud high school football
coach, Boone, (Denzel Washington) who just wants to
set aside the recent problems and play some football.
Standing in the way of his goal are the school’s
devoted and honest coach, Yoast, (Will Patton), the
coach’s enthusiastic daughter (Hayden Panettiere),
and a group of young men trying not to let the world
around them judge their integrated team.
“Titans”
is a cheerful crowd-pleaser with a lot of heart. It
is another staple in the Bruckheimer library that shows
this producer is expanding his palette. I loved the
chemistry and charge felt when this film really works.
It’s amazing how much this film can get to you
and make you cheer. I loved Hayden Panettiere as Cheryl
Yoast, daughter of coach Yoast. This little girl had
so many key and great moments throughout that you just
couldn’t help but cheer for her wonderful performance.
I also liked seeing Will Patton carry on his sympathetic
tough guy persona in this film much like he did in “Armageddon”.
Patton is becoming a great actor and I hope Hollywood
is acknowledging his talent. In regards to Denzel Washington,
I found him often to be cardboard when trying to be
headstrong coach. Denzel is an amazing actor and he
delivers a lot of great speeches in this film but often
I find that because the film never deals completely
with its racism angle we never really see Boone’s
emotional struggle. This leads me to my analysis of
the film’s evident flaw.
The biggest problem with “Titans” was that
it was just too pleasing and never really explores the
raw side of things. We know that a lot of pain, frustration,
and intrigue happened to these characters. The film
always takes the cheerful side for the majority of the
film and this takes away from the raw emotion connected
with a true story. I highly doubt that these situations
and the integration as a whole was this way. This point
made really pulled away from the heart of Coach Boone
and his struggle. I think that was the story of the
film not if they could win the next big game. What are
we supposed to remember the Titans for? Boone’s
struggle or that they won?
I would have loved to see the film explore the racism
side a little more and flesh out what actually happened
to these people. Thus delving deeper into the emotions
and realism of the Titans and the team’s members.
Racism is a subject we should all address not ignore.
In a lot of scenes the film ignores that a character
maybe a racist and just shows it as very subtle friction.
What does this teach our children?
(3
of 5) So Says the Soothsayer.
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