Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Lburgess-754-643003 Whatever happened to the young men that won the competition?Did they go on to bigger and better things?Did they give back to the community? Focus was on the coach and changing a neighborhood for the better, so what happened to the first fledglings? The movie sets a goal at showing how one person can make a difference for the better through positive influence. The fact that a person changes while instituting change is demonstrated. Self aggrandizing is never acceptable, which the coach had to learn the hard way. Selfless actions and selfish/egocentric actions are more than evident.

danceability Outstanding movieI loved this movie. Bernie Mack and Terrence Howard are excellent. The film is very touching and I cried during it. I'm glad it is a true story. Very inspirational! It shows that a person can overcome any obstacle if they are determined to do so. A very outstanding movie. It is a inspiritual for our today children's that is growing up in the inner city. It tell a story that you can succeed in life even if you live in the inner city. It only take one person to mentor and change your life. A fabulously made movie acting is outstanding and the story line could not be pertrade any better. Simply outstanding.

Michael DeZubiria It's important to keep in mind the real meaning of the phrase "Inspired by a true story" when watching Pride. It's sort of like "You could save up to 50%," which can quite literally be translated to "You can't save more than 50%." It all sounds great until you realize that the lower part of "up to" is "zero." Similarly, "inspired by a true story" means that someone heard a story and it made them think of this one. The only certainty is that the real story and the one you're about to see are not the same thing.There is a real Jim Ellis that began coaching the swim team at the Philadelphia Department of Recreation in the early 1970s, but I have a feeling that the real Jim Ellis must not have been able to conceal some feelings of disappointment at the way the movie turned out. Clearly, it takes wild liberties with the story of his life, and I just picture him responding to the strange looks of his friends who wonder why the movie is so much different than the man they know.At any rate, one thing that he will surely be proud of is that he is portrayed by Terrence Howard, one of our finest actors, who starred alongside Bernie Mac who, despite the lack of an original and powerful story, still gives a heartfelt and moving performance. The movie takes place in 1970s Philadelphia, a time and place where racism was the norm, not the exception, and the educated and professional Jim Ellis, who is also an accomplished swimmer, is having trouble finding a worthwhile teaching position, until finally relegated to a falling apart recreation center, which he is assigned the task of cleaning up before its demolition. We can certainly understand his feeling of belittlement. When we first meet Elston, the maintenance man (Bernie Mac), he is a disillusioned grump who sits in his office surrounded by piles of junk that touch the ceiling and watching daytime TV on an old, dusty television set. Needless to say, when Jim shows up to start cleaning the place up and clearing it out, Elston is not exactly friendly with him. He knew his rec center was being closed, and all his anger about that transferred quite smoothly onto Jim. Given his past as a college swimmer, Jim takes a special interest in the pool, which he cleans and fills and brings to top shape. A group of black teenagers who play basketball just outside the rec center take interest in the pool when their basketball rim is taken away and the heat remains stifling, and soon the group have a developing swim team on their hands, which they enter into a citywide swim meet. To call them underdogs, of course, would be something of an understatement. They're unorganized, unprofessional, insufficiently trained, and have no idea how to behave at a swim meet. That doesn't matter, of course. The movie is your standard underdog sports story, so the first athletic outing is totally unimportant as anything other than a learning experience, a catalyst to drive their much harder and much more focused training that will lead up to the final athletic outing, the one that matters. By now, the only thing a sports movie has going for it is that the protagonist(s) do not have to win at the film's climax, we only have to understand the meaning and significance of their effort. Sadly, the movie has all of the character development of an old Seagal movie. The good guys are the good guys because they're just supposed to be, and the bad guys are the nasty white swimmers who laugh and jeer and make racist jokes at our team. Oh, and there's one scene where one of the white guys kicks one of the black guys underwater while in the middle of a race. I didn't know it was really possible to kick someone underwater like that, but you get the idea of how deep the character development is.We understand that this is the group of kids that Jim Ellis turned from kids hanging out on the streets doing nothing with their lives and into an organized and competitive team of swimmers, but other than that we don't really get to know anything about who they are.But the biggest problem is that the only real statements that the movie makes are that effort and organization lead to success and racism is bad. Both of these are so obvious that when a movie is made with them alone it ends up feeling empty and unnecessary. Racism was so much more powerful in America in the 1970s that it feels like an enormous loss that the movie dealt directly with that issue but didn't really say anything about it. It's sort of a feel- good movie, but when it's over and you realize how much it should have said is much bigger than what it said, the feel-good sensation turns into a sad disappointment.

Roland E. Zwick "Pride" is the latest piece of sentimental uplift set in the movie-spun world of real-life sports.You know the drill. An idealistic coach takes a ragtag collection of recalcitrant youngsters, and through discipline, hard work, and a litany of inspirational speeches, turns them into a winning team overflowing with character and pride. When the youths have to battle racial prejudice on top of everything else - as in "Remember the Titans" and "Glory Road" - well, that's just additional icing on the feel-good cake.It would be easy to be cynical about a movie like "Pride." It clearly knows all the right buttons to push as it manipulates the emotions and stacks the decks in ways that could call into question the integrity of its makers. Yet, for all its slavish devotion to the formula, "Pride" works as a movie, thanks, primarily, to the actors who approach their roles with an earnestness and sincerity that bring the concept to life on screen.Terrence Howard portrays Jim Ellis, a former competitive swimmer, who in 1974 is sent to dismantle a failing rec center run by the Philadelphia Department of Recreation. Once there, he meets up with a group of inner city boys whom he teaches to swim, and who, as a team, make the transition from hopeless underdogs to state champions in the course of a single season. Of course, it goes without saying that Ellis has to contend with the initial cockiness and lack of discipline of his own swimmers, but he also has to battle the prejudice of the other all-white teams against whom they compete as well as a local street hoodlum bent on drawing the boys into a life of crime.Luckily, Howard receives strong support from Bernie Mac, Tom Arnold and a handful of fine young actors who acquit themselves well in the role of the swimmers.There are times when "Pride" lays it on a little thick, when it seems more interested in tugging at our heartstrings than in telling a completely believable story, but I suspect that most members of the audience will be as awash in goose bumps and tears by the end of the movie as the script itself is in clichés. But then, like it or not, that's the name of the game when it comes to inspirational sports stories these days.