As a writer, wife, and step/mother of seven, I hate many things. Yes, hate; I know it’s a strong word. Whoever implied that motherhood increases the likelihood for compassion and grace in a woman has never sat up until five in the morning with a snot-filled child, watching Barney the dinosaur tenderly dance with someone’s grandfather on the Sprout Channel. They’ve never been asked if they’re having twins when they’ve very clearly explained that they are having a single child, and then have the asker ask if a second child might be in there, somewhere, “hiding.” They’ve never stood in line at Walgreens with infant suppositories, covered in child vomit and grape flavored liquid Tylenol as the guy in front of them pays for his newspaper in Canadian pennies. But, of all the mild, non-personal inconveniences of my life, I’ve never hated anything so much as I hate the film Rudy.
If I may explain: a few years ago, my husband and I hauled the kids to my mother in law’s condo in New Hampshire for a week during summer vacation. Being August, It was wet and hot and oppressive, much like wearing the Batsuit around constantly, and there were intermittent thunderstorms, which meant we spent a lot of time in the condo, slapping at mosquito bites and watching movies. My middle stepson was playing flag football that year, and excitedly informed us that his coach considered the 1993 film Rudy to be required watching for all team members. Now, I should mention that I graduated high school in ‘93, also known as America’s Most Unintentionally Hilarious Year. We all knew how pathetic we were in our overall shorts and jean waistbands that rose to damn-near chest level. The theme to my prom, for example, was “WHOOMP! (There it is!)” And we knew better than to give any credence to most of the non-Jurassic Park movies of the time, such as Rudy, Cliffhanger, and basically any Hugh Grant vehicle post-Divine Brown. But, whatever, it was free on VUDU, which should have been enough of a warning, and we had no place to be, so we all piled into the living room to watch Rudy. Big Mistake.
The film opens in the sixties, in bluecollar Illinois, with Rudy Ruettiger, the tiresome youngest of four boys who loves Notre Dame Football in a thinly veiled ploy to receive acceptance from his drunken stereotype of a father, played drunken stereo typically by national treasure Ned Beatty. (All drunks in the nineties were played by either Ned Beatty or Charles Durning, and casting calls consisted mainly of the two of them showing up to audition in their underwear, stinking of gin. They would fall over nothing, proposition a potted plant and then lock themselves angrily in a supply closet. Whomever did it the most naturally got the job.) Little Rudy loves Notre Dame so much he plays recordings of Fighting Irish coach Ara Parseghian’s motivational speeches and makes his dimwitted best friend, Pete, watch him lip-sync and act them out. And the best friend just has to sit there and take it, when all he wanted probably was a nice meat loaf dinner and a few hours away from his own drunken stereotype of a father.
If I may explain: a few years ago, my husband and I hauled the kids to my mother in law’s condo in New Hampshire for a week during summer vacation. Being August, It was wet and hot and oppressive, much like wearing the Batsuit around constantly, and there were intermittent thunderstorms, which meant we spent a lot of time in the condo, slapping at mosquito bites and watching movies. My middle stepson was playing flag football that year, and excitedly informed us that his coach considered the 1993 film Rudy to be required watching for all team members. Now, I should mention that I graduated high school in ‘93, also known as America’s Most Unintentionally Hilarious Year. We all knew how pathetic we were in our overall shorts and jean waistbands that rose to damn-near chest level. The theme to my prom, for example, was “WHOOMP! (There it is!)” And we knew better than to give any credence to most of the non-Jurassic Park movies of the time, such as Rudy, Cliffhanger, and basically any Hugh Grant vehicle post-Divine Brown. But, whatever, it was free on VUDU, which should have been enough of a warning, and we had no place to be, so we all piled into the living room to watch Rudy. Big Mistake.
The film opens in the sixties, in bluecollar Illinois, with Rudy Ruettiger, the tiresome youngest of four boys who loves Notre Dame Football in a thinly veiled ploy to receive acceptance from his drunken stereotype of a father, played drunken stereo typically by national treasure Ned Beatty. (All drunks in the nineties were played by either Ned Beatty or Charles Durning, and casting calls consisted mainly of the two of them showing up to audition in their underwear, stinking of gin. They would fall over nothing, proposition a potted plant and then lock themselves angrily in a supply closet. Whomever did it the most naturally got the job.) Little Rudy loves Notre Dame so much he plays recordings of Fighting Irish coach Ara Parseghian’s motivational speeches and makes his dimwitted best friend, Pete, watch him lip-sync and act them out. And the best friend just has to sit there and take it, when all he wanted probably was a nice meat loaf dinner and a few hours away from his own drunken stereotype of a father.
Got a few bucks, kid? I feel like a Zima.
Flash forward several years: Rudy has become Sean Astin and is going steady with Sherry, played by Lili Taylor, appearing here in full “a check is a check” mode. He still has dreams of playing football for Notre Dame even though he has terrible grades and is like five feet tall with little or no athletic talent, but Sherry is not there for that. She takes him around to some shitty little house for sale and is basically like, well, Rudy, I’ve listened to you go on and on about Notre Dame for about eight years and presumably haven't even gotten any hot Hobbit sex out of it, because you’re Rudy and probably can’t reach climax unless it’s to a recording of Coach Parseghian singing Happy Birthday, Mr. President, so I’m gonna need us to get married and buy this house. Rudy answers in the way he usually does, by saying something about Notre Dame. So, Sherry’s like, yeah, it’s been fun, enjoy lipsyncing to dumbass Pete until you’re fifty.
BUT THEN PETE FALLS INTO LAVA AND DIES.
That’s how I remember it, but apparently it was an explosion at the steel mill, where he and Pete had taken jobs with Ned Beatty. Before dying, though, Pete gifts Rudy with a Notre Dame jacket he saved up for for like nine hundred years, and Rudy weeps tears of joy and the rest of his family is like, awesome, now he’ll never shut up about Notre Dame. Anyway, Pete dies and Rudy is inspired to make his dreams come true and not end up dumb and dead like his dumb, dead best friend, so he travels to Indiana and hassles a priest until he gets a scholarship into a nearby college with hopes of getting good enough grades to eventually transfer to Notre Dame. Along the way some bad things happen to him: he’s treated poorly by snobby Notre Dame girl Mary after he low-grade lies to her about being a fellow student, a thing she kind of assumed since he wears that jacket- which by now must smell like if a chili dog grew an ass- everywhere and is constantly fucking hanging around, a groundskeeper played by Charles S. Dutton shakes his head and scowls a lot at him, and, worst of all, he meets a character played by Jon Favreau. The latter, named D-Bob (too easy), inexplicably offers to tutor Rudy in exchange for helping him to meet some hot ladies. Right, because Rudy is such a stud, with his stinking jacket, and his witty rapport about Notre Dame, and the way he stalks the groundskeeper in hopes that he can roll around on the football field like a dog rubbing itself on the carcass of a dead gopher.
Eventually, the rich, snotty Mary, who, like all of us, is concurrently intrigued and repelled by Rudy, finds some fug girl for D-Bob to date and D-Bob in turn helps Rudy overcome his deadly- JESUS, TAKE THE WHEEL- Dyslexia, and Rudy is finally able to wiggle his ass into Notre Dame and the football team as part of some Sad Boy Program. Naturally, new head Coach Dan Devine, who wants to win games and, for some reason, is painted here as the bad guy, is like, Well, shit, you’re a nice kid and all, Rudy, but I run a football team, not a fucking Hotdog on a Stick. You’re too short to be a mascot and too uncoordinated to sell peanuts, and you really weird-out the groundskeeper, but maybe, someday, you might be allowed to actually buy a ticket to a game, if you sit far enough away so that the players don’t have to see you. Then, in a twist that EVERYONE saw coming, the actual good, talented players on the Notre Dame team are like, fuck it, let’s compromise our season and professional careers by going against our coach to get that little bastard into some record books that no one will ever read or care about because, RUDY. That happened. I actually stuck around through the credits, because I was expecting a last scene in which one of the Notre Dame players is like, So, what’s that kid Rudy dying of, anyway? Oh, nothing? And he’s a grown man? So, we just…? Well, what the shit’s he gonna do now, go back to Illinois and drink with Ned Beatty? Jesus, you guys, what the hell was the point of any of this? Charlie? Gomez? Moose? (gives double bird.) Fuck you guys, I’m gonna go watch Maude.
BUT THEN PETE FALLS INTO LAVA AND DIES.
That’s how I remember it, but apparently it was an explosion at the steel mill, where he and Pete had taken jobs with Ned Beatty. Before dying, though, Pete gifts Rudy with a Notre Dame jacket he saved up for for like nine hundred years, and Rudy weeps tears of joy and the rest of his family is like, awesome, now he’ll never shut up about Notre Dame. Anyway, Pete dies and Rudy is inspired to make his dreams come true and not end up dumb and dead like his dumb, dead best friend, so he travels to Indiana and hassles a priest until he gets a scholarship into a nearby college with hopes of getting good enough grades to eventually transfer to Notre Dame. Along the way some bad things happen to him: he’s treated poorly by snobby Notre Dame girl Mary after he low-grade lies to her about being a fellow student, a thing she kind of assumed since he wears that jacket- which by now must smell like if a chili dog grew an ass- everywhere and is constantly fucking hanging around, a groundskeeper played by Charles S. Dutton shakes his head and scowls a lot at him, and, worst of all, he meets a character played by Jon Favreau. The latter, named D-Bob (too easy), inexplicably offers to tutor Rudy in exchange for helping him to meet some hot ladies. Right, because Rudy is such a stud, with his stinking jacket, and his witty rapport about Notre Dame, and the way he stalks the groundskeeper in hopes that he can roll around on the football field like a dog rubbing itself on the carcass of a dead gopher.
Eventually, the rich, snotty Mary, who, like all of us, is concurrently intrigued and repelled by Rudy, finds some fug girl for D-Bob to date and D-Bob in turn helps Rudy overcome his deadly- JESUS, TAKE THE WHEEL- Dyslexia, and Rudy is finally able to wiggle his ass into Notre Dame and the football team as part of some Sad Boy Program. Naturally, new head Coach Dan Devine, who wants to win games and, for some reason, is painted here as the bad guy, is like, Well, shit, you’re a nice kid and all, Rudy, but I run a football team, not a fucking Hotdog on a Stick. You’re too short to be a mascot and too uncoordinated to sell peanuts, and you really weird-out the groundskeeper, but maybe, someday, you might be allowed to actually buy a ticket to a game, if you sit far enough away so that the players don’t have to see you. Then, in a twist that EVERYONE saw coming, the actual good, talented players on the Notre Dame team are like, fuck it, let’s compromise our season and professional careers by going against our coach to get that little bastard into some record books that no one will ever read or care about because, RUDY. That happened. I actually stuck around through the credits, because I was expecting a last scene in which one of the Notre Dame players is like, So, what’s that kid Rudy dying of, anyway? Oh, nothing? And he’s a grown man? So, we just…? Well, what the shit’s he gonna do now, go back to Illinois and drink with Ned Beatty? Jesus, you guys, what the hell was the point of any of this? Charlie? Gomez? Moose? (gives double bird.) Fuck you guys, I’m gonna go watch Maude.
Not pictured: Realism
So, I’m sitting there with the kids, in the midst of all this TRIUMPH PORN, and suddenly it occurs to me: Does Rudy even have a mother? Then answer is yes, she bakes a pie in one scene and shows it around, I think. It’s during a scene in which Rudy returns home from Notre Dame during the holidays to find that his ex-girlfriend Sherry is now dating one of his doofus brothers, because HOW ELSE IS SHE GOING TO GET THAT HOUSE? Without one of the Ruettiger Brothers SHE’D BE LIVING IN THE GODDAMNED STREET LIKE A HOBO.
There’s like four fucking women in Rudy. Sherry, the hopeful homeowner; His pie baking mother; Melinda, the rich girl who was mean to him once; and, eventually, the plain faced girl who was just barely not-ugly enough to date Jon Favreau. And that’s what really pushed the bile to the tip of my throat: the fact that my stepson’s coach, a coach to both boys and girls, would recommend this movie, a movie in which a young woman’s greatest dream consists of entering a loveless marriage as a means to own property. And, sure, look- I understand that Rudy, the Rudy that Rudy is named for, doesn’t really come away with any hot shit, being that he works his little ass off for an honorary mention in Notre Dame history as a guy who played one game for five minutes, all in hopes that his drunken father will look up from vomiting in a urinal long enough to slur something that sounds like that’s my boy, but consider the lives of the women in this shit-show. In stark contrast to the men, they are generally not even drawn broadly enough to want anything. Only Sherry, reflected through the dead eyes of Lili Taylor, has passion for one thing, that sad, tiny house, and we still leave the film knowing that she somehow does not deserve it.
For my money, there’s only one movie that girls and boys can watch together and feel the camaraderie that makes up a real squad, and that’s James Cameron’s Aliens. Vasquez. Hicks. Ripley. Hudson. Frost. Bishop. All the men and women and androids of the world coming together to kick some alien ass and to tell Paul Reiser he’s full of shit. Everything else is like Rudy, a weirdly incomplete tale that separates the dreams and goals of boys and girls, honoring one, negating the other. Could it ever be that we want the same thing, the same happiness, the same intergalactic peace? Could it ever be that we both might win? That we both might walk off into the sunset with our smelly Notre Dame jackets strewn over our shoulders, feeling validated and represented, and, nicest of all, part of the same goddamned team?
There’s like four fucking women in Rudy. Sherry, the hopeful homeowner; His pie baking mother; Melinda, the rich girl who was mean to him once; and, eventually, the plain faced girl who was just barely not-ugly enough to date Jon Favreau. And that’s what really pushed the bile to the tip of my throat: the fact that my stepson’s coach, a coach to both boys and girls, would recommend this movie, a movie in which a young woman’s greatest dream consists of entering a loveless marriage as a means to own property. And, sure, look- I understand that Rudy, the Rudy that Rudy is named for, doesn’t really come away with any hot shit, being that he works his little ass off for an honorary mention in Notre Dame history as a guy who played one game for five minutes, all in hopes that his drunken father will look up from vomiting in a urinal long enough to slur something that sounds like that’s my boy, but consider the lives of the women in this shit-show. In stark contrast to the men, they are generally not even drawn broadly enough to want anything. Only Sherry, reflected through the dead eyes of Lili Taylor, has passion for one thing, that sad, tiny house, and we still leave the film knowing that she somehow does not deserve it.
For my money, there’s only one movie that girls and boys can watch together and feel the camaraderie that makes up a real squad, and that’s James Cameron’s Aliens. Vasquez. Hicks. Ripley. Hudson. Frost. Bishop. All the men and women and androids of the world coming together to kick some alien ass and to tell Paul Reiser he’s full of shit. Everything else is like Rudy, a weirdly incomplete tale that separates the dreams and goals of boys and girls, honoring one, negating the other. Could it ever be that we want the same thing, the same happiness, the same intergalactic peace? Could it ever be that we both might win? That we both might walk off into the sunset with our smelly Notre Dame jackets strewn over our shoulders, feeling validated and represented, and, nicest of all, part of the same goddamned team?
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