Home > Central Texas High School Football > Archives > 2008 > October > 15 > Entry
Dead Fish flops on big screen
I was about to walk out of the theatre on spilled popcorn.
In theory, I should’ve at least liked the film Walking on Dead Fish, which ran from last Friday until tomorrow at the Hollywood Jewel 16 in Woodway. I love high school football football, I love documentary films and I’m certainly empathetic to the tragedy that Louisiana residents faced in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Supposedly, the film sets out to tell the story of a small-town high school football team that looks within to brave the adversity delivered by Hurricane Katrina. The film’s website, www.walkingondeadfish.com, presents the plot like this: “Can teenage boys blown together by the winds of Katrina overcome the tragedy of losing their homes and school? Can kids with vastly different racial, economic and religious backgrounds co-exist? Can one-time high schools rivals set aside these differences to band together and lift the spirit of this broken community?”
But the film doesn’t answer any of these questions. Heck, it barely even addresses them.
Instead, Walking on Dead Fish managed to bring out the worst aspects of high school football — a coach who’s too obsessed with winning and losing to grasp the big picture, parents who pressure their kids to earn their ride to college through athletics and fans who overrate a team when its winning and over-ridicule the same team when it fails.
Ultimately, the key plot point of Walking on Dead Fish revolves around running backs Johnny Owen and Stanley Jackson.
Owen begins attending East St. John High School because his former prep school was closed because of damage from Katrina. It’s not the story of a family that loses its home and finds refuge in the East St. John community and especially the football team. It’s the story of a star football player that needs a new place shine.
There’s mention of one other football player, Takik Peck, who earns a starting role on the offensive line. Peck is legitimately displaced by Katrina as he comes to live with an aunt and uncle in the East St. John school district. But Peck’s story, the more compelling one as it relates to the hurricane, goes largely untold. In fact, the viewer learns more about the player Peck bumps from the starting lineup because that kid quits the team, then comes back when he finds playing a backup in football preferable to starting as a grocery sacker.
Film narrator Terry Bradshaw — who’s often stiff as he reads trite descriptions of game action — claims that 20 football players join the East St. John team after they’re displaced by Katrina. But the viewer only meets two of them.
The film sprinkles in scenes of Joshuelle Tsueno helping to board up his grandmother’s house and Tsueno describes how the experience brought him closer to his grandmother.
There are also snippets of construction workers building houses in, LaPlace, the town where East St. John is located.
But it’s difficult to see a real correlation between the wrath of Katrina and the strength of the East St. John football team. Except for some melodrama, it’s impossible to see how the East St. John football team served as a refuge for anyone affected by Hurricane Katrina.
When I first saw the local release date for this film, I thought, “Hmm, I bet this is going to do well on a Friday night in football season.”
Now I sincerely hope high school football fans didn’t waste a Friday night watching the flimsy story of someone else’s football team.
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