My girls (ages 9 & 14) loved “Her Best Move”!! We were fortunate to screen the film early at the Chicago Int’l Children’s Film Festival. It’s a refreshing film, with a great message. There are so few films for teens and tweens like this! My girls play competitive soccer and they were amazed at how exciting and realistic the soccer action was. Our whole family liked it (including my son who prefers little league to soccer!)

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H. Bala “Me Too Can Read” (Carson – hey, we have an IKEA store! – CA USA) –

  

  

Most times I tend to stay away from the Disney Channel and all its saccharine goodness, and at the best of times I’m only a casual fan of soccer. But family obligations had me parked in the living room one evening and checking out this movie, and it wasn’t really so horrible a time. HER BEST MOVE doesn’t flash the sublime cinematic creds of Bend It Like Beckham (Widescreen Edition) or the Amanda Bynes-powered appeal of She’s the Man (Widescreen Edition), but it’s still a positive and very watchable dramedy and ideally suited for family viewing, especially if you have little girls and if they’re into soccer.

15-year-old Sara Davis may be a soccer phenom (and a bit of a ballhog) but, in many ways, she’s your typical teenaged girl, trying not to get mown down by pressures of school and social peers and all that stuff we all went thru when we were that insecure age. Sara carries the added baggage of a taskmaster of a dad who relentlessly pushes her in her sport. But Sara genuinely loves soccer and has a long shot at making the National Development Team, and so she falls in line, sacrificing her time at being just a normal girl and hanging out with her best friend, missing out on her dance classes and on a possible romance with that reclusive but cute teen photographer. The predictable fallout is that Sara is gradually succumbing to stress, what with her being bombarded from all sides, expected to meet all sorts of obligations. Sadly, not even her supportive mom’s sneaking dollops of ice cream into those yucky nutritional blended drinks is enough of an upside.

HER BEST MOVE doesn’t try to pull a fast one on you. It’s a solid picture, straightforward and familiar thru and thru, from Sara’s character arc to the ultra-competitive on-field rival to that all-important big final game. Also familiar are those themes of self-discovery, personal choice, and parents exerting too much pressure on their kids to excel in youth sports, to the detriment of these kids’ enjoyment in simply being kids. And, frankly, the soccer matches won’t dazzle anyone. It all comes down to the cast’s performances, and, at the movie’s core, is Leah Pipes’s performance. Leah Pipes isn’t a Barbie playing at soccer. There’s a realness to her and an honesty in how she demonstrates her character’s self-consciousness and anxieties and in her tentative steps toward romance. She grounds this movie. To quote from her interview with the popculturemadness website: “I was so thrilled to get the part of Sara because I was able to combine my two passions: acting and soccer.” And sure enough, Leah is pretty convincing as a soccer player. It helps, too, that, even with its crop of clichés the film doesn’t get too preachy or silly and that the screenplay doesn’t resort too much to overwrought and contrived high school schtick. In summing up, there’s enough here that’s thought-provoking and substantial and engaging to separate HER BEST MOVE from the pack of run-of-the-mill teen flicks endlessly parading thru the Disney Channel.

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