That Championship Season

Backslapping, whooping, and blubbering abound when four college buddies foregather to relive the moment twenty years earlier when coach (Mitchum) led them to glory in the state basketball league. Jollity soon gives way to maudlin nostalgia, and as the liquor flows, the inner men begin to peek through in a depressingly familiar succession of outbursts, breakdowns, and confessions of inadequacy. Locker-room camaraderie is held up as the US apotheosis of brotherly love, and the old 'winning is everything' ethic gets trotted out with suspiciously few ironic sideswipes. Excellent performances, but writer/director Miller obviously couldn't bear to discard one finely crafted chestnut of his Pulitzer prizewinning play, and makes his distinguished cast wade through one of the most torrential masses of verbiage ever to hit the screen.