Harvard Beats Yale 29-29

An odd viewing experience. Not necessarily a bad experience, but strange in these days when the documentary film has been raised to a creative art form. The strongest impression that comes through watching this work, about a long ago football game, is that it was made by someone who knows nothing about football. Anyone who knows the game can predict, not long into the movie (which parallels commentary with actual footage of the game) how the outcome would be realized (gigantic hint: turnovers). That predictable quality dulls the presumed suspense of the titular contest, a spoiler that is only partly redeemed by the truly unusual events that brought the game to its conclusion. Beyond the record of the game, the doc in toto gives the viewer a fairly static presentation; there's little in the way of creative touches, and everything comes across as simply functional and minimalist. That comes across as weird now that viewers have gotten used to more flair in the way docs portray their subjects. Finally, the weirdest note of all: the rather cheeky title comes from a headline that appeared in the Harvard newspaper...which is never referenced once in the body of the documentary. (It only rates a mention in the closing credits.) The filmmaker makes a bigger deal of Doonesbury cartoons (featuring parodies of the Yale jocks, including quarterback Brian Dowling). Spin it all together, and the ultimate sense is one of someone who thinks this game and its story are important simply by virtue of what colleges were involved--and thus, there's no need to do anything to engage viewers beyond that. Sorry, Ivy--the real world doesn't work that way.