Michael Tollin
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Connections, in both directions
But even at its spottiest, “Radio” is eons beyond the ridiculous plot machinations of I Am Sam or The Other Sister.
The film’s efficiently formulaic nature shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given that the screenplay was penned by John Gatins, who has created his own cottage industry of sports movies over the past decade, having written rousing, audience-friendly, feel-good movies about baseball (Hard Ball and Summer Catch, both from 2001), basketball (2005’s Coach Carter), and horse racing (2005’s Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story).
With lightweight scripts such as “Summer Catch” and “Real Steel” on his resume, screenwriter John Gatins doesn’t display the necessary restraint to sustain a consistent dramatic tone.
Following failed motion-capture experiments "The Polar Express" and "A Christmas Carol," he's chosen to direct a script from a guy whose credits include "Real Steel" and "Summer Catch."
In "Coach Carter," screenwriters Mark Schwahn ("The Perfect Score," TV's "One Tree Hill") and John Gatins ("Hardball," "Summer Catch") follow the same playbook, blending the basketball with issues from gang violence to teen pregnancy.
Writers Mark Schwahn and John Gatins have a teen-movie pedigree (lightweight fare like Summer Catch and The Perfect Score), and theyâve kludged the filmâs true-life material into a conventional three-act shape instead of reimagining it as cinematic.
The film was predestined to be generic: The writers, Mark Schwahn and John Gatins, are responsible for writing "The Perfect Score," "Hardball" and "Summer Catch," three movies that exemplify by-the-numbers filmmaking.
I imagine screenwriters Mark Schwan (The Perfect Score, �One Tree Hill�) and John Gatins (Hard Ball, Summer Catch) had a whole bunch of post-it notes in which they jotted down every life lesson they could think of in about, oh, 15 minutes, and then just stuck them all over their script to Coach Carter, eventually incorporating them into it.
Director Thomas Carter (no relation to Ken) relies on the same kind of processed emotion he brought to his interracial romance movie Save the Last Dance, and he's not helped at all by a completely predictable screenplay by Mark Schwahn (The Perfect Score) and John Gatins (Summer Catch).