With Brad Pitt driving the race car adventure F1 to critical and box office glory, more goofy golf shenanigans courtesy of Adam Sandler as Happy Gilmore 2 this month on Netflix, September’s Jordan Peele-produced horror film Him set in an isolated compound of a dynasty team’s aging quarterback, October’s The Smashing Machine headlined by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as a former wrestler and MMA fighter and Timothee Chalamet as a champion ping pong player in December’s Marty Supreme, it’s clear there’s no slowing down the genre of sports films.
A well-crafted sports movie can inspire and motivate and leave you laughing, gasping or thinking. The triumph of a good drama, the bloodsport of a tragedy and the classic curves of a winning comedy all have their place in this hallowed hall of fame.
Listen here at around the 28-minute mark for a podcast discussion about the greatest sports movies of all time on SportsIQ with Larry Smith.
Let’s dispense of the films worthy of the penalty box first. I’m no fan of overly earnest sports movies with surface character development (see recent failed Oscars bait The Boys on the Boat – or better yet, don’t) or franchise sequels that pale in comparison to their predecessors (Space Jam: A New Legacy, Caddyshack II, Major League: Back to the Minors or D3). Films can certainly shortchange social progress, such as when Miguel Nunez pretends to be a woman to play in the WNBA in Juwanna Mann or when The Bad News Bears Go to Japan. Fake sports depicted in Rollerball with Chris Klein or Solarbabies with Jason Patric are a cringe category of their own. And animal actors such as field goal kicking mules (Gus), dunking dogs (Air Bud), boxing kangaroos (Matilda), sprinting zebras (Racing Stripes) and outfield chimps (Ed) rarely enrich the formula. But for every misbegotten Sylvester Stallone sports vehicle like Over the Top in which he plays a truck driver bound for the arm wrestling world championships or Rocky V in which the brain damaged boxer fights a preposterous character called Tommy Gunn, there are dozens of elevated sports films to keep viewers engrossed and entertained.
Let’s look at four critical categories of successful sports films and why they stand the test of time
SUIT UP FOR CATEGORY #1, IN WHICH JOINING THE CLUB IS THE CENTRAL THEME!
Everybody wants to belong, and a variety of successful sports films showcase the cunning, courtship and camaraderie it takes to overcome obstacles and triumph in the team-up.
Rudy and Lucas are two favorites about would-be football players shooting their shot. In the former, Sean Astin’s real-life blue collar dreamer finds his way to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish roster, carried into history with chants and cheers. The fictional title character of Lucas played by Corey Haim is frequently bullied, and joining the high school football team proves a mixed bag for the pint-sized hero trying to impress the girl. Freeze-frame finales abound!
Sometimes the actual club athletes wish to join (acceptance in the world!) can change the face of history, as the runners of Chariots of Fire must overcome antisemitism in the race to Olympics glory; the prisoner of war soccer players of Victory must prove themselves worthy in an exhibition game against the Germans; Denzel Washington and company must integrate a 1971 Virginia high school football team in Remember the Titans; or when Kurt Russell and his hot-headed hockey players must summon The Miracle to win a gold Olympic medal over the Soviets in a microcosm for American patriotism during the Cold War.
The stakes can also be silly as protagonists aim to fit in! Caddyshack was the ultimate “snobs versus slobs” comedy skewering country club golf culture years before Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story teamed Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller duking it out in an outlandish league.
Coming of age and finding a family are common themes through nostalgic baseball films such as The Sandlot, Penny Marshall’s star-studded A League of Their Own and Richard Linklater’s underrated Everybody Wants Some!! Unlikely team-ups also take center court in Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes collaborating for intergalactic basketball supremacy and Bring It On featuring a squad of champion cheerleaders.
Joining the club can also take the form of a sports biopic such as 42, in which the late Chadwick Boseman stars as Jackie Robinson, the first Black player in the MLB who dealt with issues of discrimination and prejudice throughout his career.
SUIT UP FOR CATEGORY #2, IN WHICH HARD-HITTING SPORTS DRAMAS CALL A SPADE A SPADE!
Gritty glimpses behind the scenes of sports legends or contemporary sports issues require unflinching truth.
This can mean a warts-and-all depiction of a real person like Annette Bening’s characterization of cantankerous but determined swimmer Nyad or Will Smith in the unflinching tale of Concussion, exposing dangers on the gridiron . Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull is likely the most famous of this film type with its haunting tale of self-destruction centered on Robert DeNiro as washed-up boxer Jake LaMotta. Clint Eastwood directs and co-stars in the acclaimed drama Million Dollar Baby, with Hillary Swank also portraying a boxer, and the story doesn’t shrink from pulling any punches for searing effect.
This type of film sometimes manifests itself in a look at history, such as the John Sayles story of the 1919 Black Sox baseball scandal, Eight Men Out or the Great Depression Era films Seabiscuit and Cinderella Man. Other times it’s full-immersion like high-gloss racecar dramas Days of Thunder and Ford v Ferrari or better yet Friday Night Lights, obsessed over the picayune details of West Texas heartland football culture and the men and women affected by the game.
Commitment to authenticity can be so critical that sports cinema is in the form of a documentary like the fascinating skateboarding culture film Dogtown and Z-Boys. Hoop Dreams is one of the greatest examples of the sports doc, centered on two Black Chicago high school teens imagining basketball fame while bussed to play at a white suburban school.
Truth-telling can center on an individual such as Mickey Rourke as The Wrestler or Christian Bale as The Fighter. Or it can simply be a true story, such as Samuel L. Jackson as Coach Carter, locking out a basketball team for poor academic performance.
We Are Marshall depicts the aftermath of a plane crash that killed most of the Marshall University football team and coaching staff and the community’s efforts to rebuild the program.
In the underseen drama Heart Like a Wheel, Bonnie Bedelia as Shirley Muldowney is determined to be a top-fuel drag racer, although no woman has ever raced them before. Despite the high risks of this kind of racing and the burden it places on her family, she perseveres in her dream.
In Ali, director Michael Mann goes full “you are there” centering his biopic on ten years in the life of the boxer Muhammad Ali, beginning with his capture of the heavyweight title in 1964 and ending with reclaiming it in the “Rumble in the Jungle” fight of 1974.
SUIT UP FOR CATEGORY #3, GREAT SPORTS MOVIES WEARING THEIR HEARTS ON THEIR SLEEVES!
There’s not always a “meet cute” like in rom coms, but uniformly there’s metaphor for the love of the game. Just as filmmakers find fondness for the specific sport they lens, they often find universal truth in the corresponding game of love outside of the ring or off the field or court.
The Rocky and Creed series are likely the most emblematic of this type of movie, blending boxing movie tropes with a centrality of love and the American dream. The Karate Kid series is similar but with the idea of mentors and a father figure embodied by Pat Morita or Jackie Chan as the martial arts patriarch.
This can manifest in the sports weepie, such as 1971’s Brian’s Song exploring the real-life friendship between Chicago Bears teammates Gale Sayers (Billy Dee Williams) and Brian Piccolo (James Caan). After Piccolo is diagnosed with cancer, they grow even closer during his fight against the disease. Field of Dreams showcases familial reconciliation and ghosts of baseball legends as it spins its acclaimed yarn. The Blind Side tells the true story of former NFL star Michael Oher’s road to football and family, buoyed by Sandra Bullock’s sentimental and Oscar-winning performance. Similarly Will Smith won his Oscar for showcasing the father’s perspective as the proud papa and coach of tennis legends, King Richard.
Love triangles make good fodder in this realm, from Bull Durham’s serio-comic chronicle of minor league catcher (Kevin Costner), pitcher (Tim Robbins) and the woman they both love (Susan Sarandon). Golf story Tin Cup repeats the formula. Last year’s Challengers with Zendaya at the center of the drama shows the fervor for tennis matches and romantic coupling with admirable abandon.
Love can help friends let loose, whether it’s the competitive bicycle racers of Breaking Away or the class of crooners and basketball players of the High School Musical films. Personal Best famously features women in love, played by Mariel Hemingway and Patrice Donnelly, whose romance extends to becoming competitors for the Olympic team in their running sports.
In the underseen Warrior, an estranged family finds redemption in the unlikeliest of places: the MMA ring. Tommy (Tom Hardy), an ex-Marine with a tragic past, returns home and enlists his father (Nick Nolte), a recovering alcoholic and former wrestling coach, to train him for “Sparta,” the biggest MMA tournament ever held. But when Tommy’s underdog brother, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), fights his way into the tournament, the two brothers must finally confront each other and the forces that pulled them apart.
Love and Basketball features Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps as childhood friends who both aspire to be professional basketball players. She’s ferociously competitive but sometimes becomes overly emotional on the court. His father plays for the Los Angeles Clippers, and he’s a natural talent and a born leader. Over the years, the two begin to fall for each other, but their separate paths to basketball stardom threaten to pull them apart.
Bend It Like Beckham stars Parminder Nagra as Jess, the daughter of a strict Indian couple in London, and she is not permitted to play organized soccer, even though she is 18. When Jess is playing for fun one day, her impressive skills are seen by Jules Paxton (Keira Knightley), who then convinces Jess to play for her semi-pro team. Jess uses elaborate excuses to hide her matches from her family while also dealing with her romantic feelings for her coach, Joe (Jonathan Rhys Meyers).
This genre of films loves to depict star-crossed lovers at the rink (Ice Castles or The Cutting Edge) and often amps up the comedy too (Major League, Necessary Roughness).
AND SUIT UP FOR CATEGORY #4, IN WHICH SELF-IMPROVEMENT IS CENTRAL AS PROTAGONISTS POLISH THEIR DIAMONDS!
Sports is all about pushing oneself to the limit, and this can happen in or outside the sports arena. Pride of the Yankees is a great example, a 1942 love letter to Lou Gehrig, played by Gary Cooper. As The Natural, Robert Redford gets his own soaring baseball redemption story. This subtext works really well in baseball, even “inside baseball” baseball movies such as Moneyball, with Brad Pitt running the numbers of what could turn a profit on the diamond, even with a motley crew of players.
Coaches are not immune to comeuppance, be they Gene Hackman among the Indiana basketball players of Hoosiers, Goldie Hawn among the Wildcats of football, Ben Affleck on The Way Back to his alma mater or Emilio Estevez in the pee-wee hockey milieu of Mighty Ducks. Even sports agents such as Tom Cruise’s Jerry Maguire or Matt Damon as a businessman in the sponsorship saga Air get redemptive arcs.
Sometimes the drama spans multiple films, with Paul Newman as billiard kingpin Minnesota Fats across both 1961’s The Hustler and 1986’s The Color of Money, the film that finally won him his Oscar.
These films can have a lot on the mind, such as Invictus, directed by Eastwood and featuring Morgan Freeman’s emotional portrayal of President Nelson Mandela. This film follows his efforts in uniting post-apartheid South Africa through sport with some help from the rugby team captain (Damon again), the country makes a run for the 1995 World Cup Championship.
Sometimes it’s just a lark, like John Candy taking on Cool Runnings and a ragtag Jamaican bobsled team or Happy Gilmore with an unsuccessful hockey player who finds he has a knack for golf and hilarity ensues.
A favorite diamond in the rough is Talladega Nights as NASCAR superstar Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell). The racer is at the top of his game; adored by fans, a trophy wife by his side, and incredible wealth. But Ricky loses it all when French Formula One champion Jean Girard roars onto the scene. Ricky, with the help of his ruthless father, must pull himself out of the depths of despair and restore his honor on the racetrack.
No matter what sports film suits your taste, there’s bound to be more great ones to watch. Get ready to binge this summer and fall on the sports movies that move you!
Note: For All-Star Week 2025 in Atlanta, The Plaza Theatre is showing famous baseball movies