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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
GO TIGERS!
Why was a documentary about high school football one of the hottest tickets at the 2001
Sundance Film Festival? The answer lies in Mr. Carlson’s ability to capture the dramatic
and unpredictable on- and off-field moments of one of the nation’s premier high school
football teams, the Massillon Tigers, as it tries to rebound after two losing seasons.
Carlson, born and raised in Massillon, Ohio, monitors a town in conflict as it weighs not
only a need to pass a levy, but the propriety of resting its success on 17- and 18-year-old
athletes. As each week ticks by and the Tigers win another game, you are simultaneously
caught up in rooting the team onto victory and alarmed at the import which high school
football maintains in the lives of this industrial town’s citizens. It seems that
everyone–from the Mayor (who allows the band to march “anywhere it wants” when the
team plays its archival) to the school superintendent (who wisely allows the team’s
success to help propel support for the levy)–is rooting for the Tigers. Everyone, except
the many non-athletes in the school who simply can’t wait to graduate. Revealing how the
season turns out, or whether the levy passes, would ruin the suspense. But there is no
question that Go Tigers captures an excitement which few sports movies achieve.
DVD Features: Several deleted scenes should not be missed. The cradle to grave
obsessive enthusiasm and loyalty are even further enhanced (sometimes to an extreme
degree) in some of these hilarious out takes, especially those about the “Tiger Van.”
Michael Morley,
President of CineBLAST! Productions (Revolution #9, Bobby G. Can't Swim
& Spring Forward)
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