The Program

By the film's end, I found myself simultaneously hoping that ESU would win its big game, and that the school would pull the plug on its football program. I guess that's how I was supposed to feel. Read full review

The Program is much better than its limited commercials suggest. There are so many ways this film could be awful, a minefield of potential trite plot lines and character-development lapses. Director/co-screenwriter David S. Ward evaded most like a punt returner weaving through would-be tacklers. [24 Sept 1993, p.49]

With convincing in-your-face footage, The Program is certain to be a crowd pleaser for fans who like their football action raw. Some of the roughest action is off the field. [25 Sept 1993, p.E1]

James Caan is underused as the crusty coach who needs a championship season, but he is supported by good turns from the highly angst-ridden quarterback (Craig Sheffer) and the straight-from-the-streets rookie running back (Omar Epps). Read full review

The Program tries to travel light and heavy, and the combination of noggin-banging action and deep-think doesn’t gel. Latham, who has previously bestowed upon us the ersatz pop reportage of “Urban Cowboy” and “Perfect,” doesn’t tunnel very deep into the world of college athletics. What he and Ward come up with is fairly standard stuff that seems derived mostly from old movies. Read full review

A routine Joe College movie. Read full review

As noisy and ludicrous as all this sounds, the movie does have its share of guilty pleasures. Like the kid on steroids, it's revved so high that it's out of control. And just as his coach does, it is possible -- though not easy -- for us to make the best of it. Read full review

The Program has little bite as satire or as muckraking. It doesn't really want to offend anyone very deeply (perhaps because it was filmed with the cooperation of nine separate college athletic departments). If you read the sports pages, you could devise your own script and it would be twice as devastating.

THE PROGRAM was a surprisingly thoughtful entry in a season glutted with sports films. (RUDY; BLUE CHIPS; THE AIR UP THERE; ABOVE THE RIM; D2; and MAJOR LEAGUE 2.) The game sequences, in particular, are deftly choreographed and charged with a real sense of drama. Read full review

But once the action wanders off the playing field, "The Program" shows all the cleverness, originality and depth of the Chicago Bears' offense. Read full review

The Program starts in a fourth-down situation by being a sports movie with virtually no one for whom the audience can root — a major drawback, no matter how hackneyed those “Rocky”-ized finishes have become. Instead, Ward and co-writer Aaron Latham seek to indict big-time college football through a collection of cliches (money-doling boosters, steroid abuse, academic negligence , shady recruiting practices) and still want us to care about whether these players and coaches win the big game. Read full review

The Program has its high points, but there are too few of them, and I suspect that many of the film's "insider's touches" are a combination of fact and fiction. Principally, this a formula football movie. Those hoping to see a hard-hitting drama about life off the field should instead prepare to be inundated by a load of feeble, unimaginative material that's almost impossible to take seriously. Read full review

Only Omar Epps ("Juice") locates substance in his role as the freshman underachiever who must fight for his starting position, but even he's in service to the uninspired "Program." If someone wanted to make a good, exciting, serious film about the ups and downs of college football, why didn't they just make a documentary about the Huskies? [24 Sept 1983, p.D19]

Despite buoying our hopes that it might be a new-fangled sports film, ``The Program'' devolves into a doltish drama about Triumph Over Adversity, all but forsaking the pure, thrilling bloodlust of its early moments. [24 Sept 1993, p.AE16]

Exciting in its big game scenes but excessively dreary in the undercoached dramatics, the seasonal offering will score some quick points at the boxoffice and then fade quickly. [24 Sept 1993]

Pigskin fans will doubtless cheer "The Program," a new melodrama set in the high-stress world of collegiate athletics, but while this David S. Ward feature pretends to address many of the most troubling aspects of high-stakes college football, it winds up ducking just about every issue it tackles. [28 Sept 1993, p.C7]

The Program trudges along like a fat freshman walk-on in a muddy practice field, piling up one collegiate scandal after another without a moral in sight. [24 Sept 1993, p.6B]

This hodgepodge of little stories about the members of a college football team contending for a championship is flaccid seasonal fare that will do all right its first few weeks at the box office amongst those starved for gridiron action but will fade from memory long before the Rose Bowl parade ends. Read full review

The lead character ostensibly is Coach Sam Winters, but the film never really focuses on the ethical compromises he needs to make and steers away from him. Thus, James Caan -- playing the coach -- appears in what amounts to a series of cameos. In fact, Caan seemingly just walks through his role, perhaps wondering how he got from "Brian's Song" to this thing. Read full review

The stupendously stupid The Program purports to detail one season in the life of the football team of Eastern State University as it struggles for a college bowl berth, but the players must overcome such inflated melodramatic claptrap it's a miracle they ever make it onto the field at all. [27 Sept 1993, p.C6]