Carla Gugino and former ‘Angel’ star David Boreanaz are teaming up for a girls basketball movie called Our Lady of Victory, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The film sounds a lot like a feminist version of the now classic Gene Hackman movie Hoosiers. It’s the story of a “sassy” newlywed named Cathy (Gugino) who becomes the head basketball coach of a girls team at a tiny Catholic college. The team is in such a bad state that they don’t even have a gym or real uniforms. Gugino’s character saves the team and leads them to a national championship, while a nun tries to save the school from land developers. David Boreanaz will play Cathy’s husband, which probably means he’ll be in the unenviable position of playing an asshole husband who wonders why his wife is off coaching basketball when he hasn’t had his dinner yet.
In my humble opinion, this movie is beneath Carla Gugino. She’s too good an actress to waste her time on sports movie material like this. The truth is, and it’s been proven time and again, that audiences are just about as interested in watching girls’ basketball movies as they are in watching actual basketball played by women. The claims of the WNBA’s promotional campaign notwithstanding, those stadiums are pretty empty. Gugino, who ought to have a little heat behind her career after a great stint on HBO’s incredibly popular series ‘Entourage”, deserves better than to end up playing to empty houses.
Maybe if Boreanaz played a vampire husband who stalked the team and turned them all into his super-powered, basketball playing, vampire brides someone might show up to see it. I hope I’m wrong because I love the people involved in making it, nut as it is, the odds of anyone caring about this movie are pretty slim.
