We’re sincerely hoping that this will fall into the ‘so bad it’s good’ category but after watching the trailer, we have our doubts.
Some terrific films about sport have come out of Hollywood over the years, but, bless ‘em, nobody in the film industry seems to be able to get it right when it comes to football.
Escape to Victory (of course) and maybe Fever Pitch are honourable exceptions, but the likes of When Saturday Comes, Goal and Soccer Dog (yes it’s an actual movie, look it up) would, without much dispute, be generally described as absolute tripe.
A new movie, United Passions, which details the founding of FIFA and charts the history of the World Cup, looks set to suffer the same fate as its predecessors as, judging by the trailer at least, it looks absolutely terrible. So, so terrible.
It will come as little surprise that FIFA reportedly provided £16million of the film’s £19million overall budget and that the likes of Joao Havelange and Sepp Blatter – who apparently had an input into the script – are portrayed flatteringly as visionaries with little focus on, you know, all the murky stuff that FIFA have been involved in over the years.
Starring the likes of Tim Roth, Sam Neill and Gerard Depardieu, United Passions was screened at the Cannes Film Festival a few days ago and was due to be released in France this week, but apart from Serbia (where it will be released next month) we have no idea when and where it might be made available to a more universal audience. Although that might actually be a good thing.
Or maybe we’re too quick to judge. With lines like “If that ball becomes a star, FIFA and Adidas will sign the biggest deal the world has ever seen” maybe it will become a success and avoid becoming the worst football-related film in movie history, even if that accolade has pretty much been sewn up already, isn’t that right Pele?
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