Continuing my trend of sports film reviews, I recently caught Dare to Dream on HBO. Dare to Dream is a documentary about the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team. Specifically, it follows the team through the careers of the five players who are most known for making it famous: Julie Foudy, Brandi Chastain, Kristine Lilly, Joy Fawcett, and Mia Hamm. These women played together on the U.S. National Team for 17 years (Kristine Lilly is still playing), and the film follows both their soccer struggles and successes and their personal struggles and successes through that time.

The film is comprised mainly of archival footage of games and interviews, and of original interviews with the key players and their coaches. When the five key players (known as the "91ers" in honor of their first World Cup victory in 1991) started with the National Team in the early 1980s, they were all in their teens, and the team was traveling coach, not getting paid, and playing for crowds composed mostly of friends and family. Together, along with a changing cast of teammates, they played through four World Cups and three Olympic games, not only winning both kinds of championships, but also bringing respect to women's soccer, and women's sports in general.

The movie's high points include the "stars" demanding payment for Olympic medals similar to what is given to male soccer players, and the discussion of how Mia Hamm became a national sports and media figure. Another thing the film does will is balance its look at the players' personal lives with their professional lives as soccer players. In particular, the segment on Joy Fawcett's decision to have children while playing, and to bring them on the road with her, was fascinating, if slightly unbelievable (back in training three weeks after giving birth? for real?).

The film's weaknesses, and the reasons it gets only three stars even though it's a great story generally well told, are twofold. First, it turns a nearly blind eye to race, which is hardly fair given that all of the players it features are white. There is one major African-American figure on the U.S. women's team, goalkeeper Brianna Scurry, who has been playing on the team since the early 1990s. While she is interviewed for this film, no mention is ever made of her race or of why the stars are all white. To make matters worse, the players' attitudes towards their international opponents, particularly the Norwegian team, referred to as the "Nordic Bitches," border on racist at points.

The other major problem is the film's insistence on being cheery and painting a picture that is, perhaps, more positive than it should be. While I heartily agree that the progress made by the U.S. National Soccer Team, and particularly by the 91ers, should not be underestimated, equal respect in sports in not a battle women have yet won, and sometimes the film makes it seem otherwise. At one point near the end, one of the National Team's younger players is trying to get across how much the older players have done for her, and she basically says "men and women in sports are equal now." Um...no. While it is absolutely true that the 91ers and women like them made it possible for women to be paid professional athletes, they haven't totally evened the playing field. Not by a long shot. This misinformed outlook, combined with the film's quick glossing over the huge blow that was the rapid demise of the Women's United Soccer Association, made it just a little bit too cheery for my pessimistic tastes.