Over the Goal (1937)
* (out of 4)
Forgotten (and rightfully so) melodrama about a very rich man who dies and is willing to leave everything he owns to Carlton Collage but only if they beat their rival in an upcoming football game. This here should be easy to Carlton's star quarterback (William Hooper) decides that he doesn't want to play any more. Now everyone around him must try and make him change his mind before it's too late. Oh, the level of suspense. OVER THE GOAL is an incredibly bad movie full of incredible annoying characters and incredibly bad laughs. The film really doesn't have too much going on for it, although bad film buffs will probably get a kick out of at least watching it since, in reality, this decade didn't give us too many awful films. Hooper would become better known later in his career but his performance here is quite bland. I'm not sure if he just knew the material was bad and didn't give it any effort or perhaps he was a little tired throughout the making of the picture. The rest of the supporting cast are pretty much forgettable with the exception being Hattie McDaniel in an early role. There's really not a good story to be found here because we get our "hero" running into one person after another and each one has a new problem. They try to get him into the big game and he says no. The next person tries and then we go to rounds three, four and five. All of this film is just one big cliché without a single laugh to be had.