The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
‘American Underdog’ scores enough points to win hearts
You don’t have to be a football fan to enjoy its feel-good story.
If a sports movie can be said to have a game plan, the Kurt Warner biopic “American Underdog” plays it safe, employing a strategy that’s more dink-and-dunk than go-big-or-go-home. Co-directed by siblings and faithbased filmmakers Andrew and John Erwin, this downthe-middle crowd pleaser ultimately makes for a rousing enough portrayal of against-the-odds fortitude, pad-crunching gridiron action and good old-fashioned Midwestern decency.
Warner’s Cinderella story is a familiar one: Undrafted after graduating from a second-tier college football program, the quarterback made ends meet stocking shelves in Iowa and slinging Arena Football League touchdowns before finally breaking into the NFL as a 26-year-old newcomer with the St. Louis Rams and going on to earn NFL MVP honors and Super Bowl glory.
“American Underdog” opens with a superfluous prologue — a young Kurt (Beau Hart) watches Super Bowl XIX, absorbing sports-as-life-lessons platitudes — before catching up with the signal caller during his redshirt senior season at the University of Northern Iowa. As the adult Kurt, “Shazam!” star Zachary Levi carries himself with casual confidence, effortless empathy and a superhero-chiseled physique — he looks the part.
Levi, 41, plays Kurt from age 22 to 28, in a curious bit of casting. It doesn’t derail the movie, but it certainly distracts from it. That said, Levi seems at home under center in the football sequences.
The script, adapted by Jon Erwin, David Aaron Cohen and Jon Gunn from the book “All Things Possible” by Warner and Michael Silver, shrewdly splits the focus between the future Hall of Famer and his eventual wife, Brenda (Anna Paquin). A single mother of two, with a legally blind son (a heartstring-tugging Hayden Zaller), Brenda is burdened with a complicated past and a challenging present. Although the cutesy courtship between Kurt and Brenda borders on Hallmark-y, the reality of their respective struggles swiftly grounds the romance in something deeper.
While most viewers will guess how the sports side of the story ends, the traumatic, less-publicized turns of Brenda’s life make the rags-to-riches narrative all the more uplifting. Executive-produced by Kurt and Brenda Warner, “American Underdog” leans into the family’s Christian faith, with moments that teeter toward cliche without hijacking the larger drama.
Even the football-illiterate can appreciate “Underdog,” which nimbly avoids inaccessibility and over-explaining, only occasionally losing sight of the intimate, feel-good story at its heart. This underdog may have been an all-time great in the air, but the movie defies expectation by, of all things, staying grounded.