The University of Notre Dame has been a power player atop American collegiate football for much of the twentieth and twenty-first century. Having the skills and ability to dress for the team on Saturdays in the fall football season is the dream of many young men of skill, physical abilities, and grades commensurate with the reputation for the major academics and athletics program that exists at the university.
(Left to right – Mary Ann Thebus as Betty Ruettiger, Ned Beatty as Daniel Ruettiger Sr. and Scott Benjaminson as Frank Ruettiger).
The mythology of that dream is the subject matter of the film Rudy (1993), which has the basis in fact. Sean Astin stars in the feature role of Daniel E. ‘Rudy’ Ruettiger, an undersized, physically over-matched, academically struggling young man with the heart, determination and dream of proving to himself, his family and his community that he has the part of playing for the Notre Dame football team in a game.
(Robert Prosky as Father Cavanaugh, left, and Sean Astin as Daniel E. ‘Rudy’ Ruettiger in the film Rudy).
The young Daniel Ruettiger, or Rudy, was the product of the small Illinois steel town where he lived with his parents and brothers. Mary Ann Thebus as Betty Ruettiger and Ned Beatty as Daniel Ruettiger Sr. were Rudy’s parents. Scott Benjaminson as Frank Ruettiger was one of the brothers who joined the chorus of folks back home to see steel mill work as his brother’s future. This truth isn’t lost on Father Cavanaugh, a priest played by Robert Prosky serving at Notre Dame, who first aims to council Rudy to head back home yet comes around to help Rudy work for the dream that became the film of the same name.
(Sean Astin as Daniel E. ‘Rudy’ Ruettiger, left, and Charles S. Dutton as Fortune in the film Rudy).
Unlikely heart and unlikely help appear in the months and years for Rudy, who enrolls at Holy Cross College in the same town as the University of Notre Dame. That help comes through Father Cavanaugh. Rudy then approaches Fortune, the head groundskeeper for Notre Dame Stadium, gets a job, and surreptitiously sleeps on a cot in Fortune’s office due to having no funds to live on either campus. Charles S. Dutton plays Fortune in Rudy, later giving Rudy a key to the office, blankets, and emotional support in getting an education while Rudy keeps his dream, as unrealistic as everyone knows it to be, alive.
(Sean Astin as Daniel E. ‘Rudy’ Ruettiger, left, and Jon Favreau as Dennis ‘D-Bob’ McGowan in the film Rudy).
Educational support for Rudy comes in the form of socially awkward yet book smart Dennis ‘D-Bob’ McGowan, played by Jon Favreau in the film. The mutual relationship becomes a friendship that holds its own merits while also satisfying a dream for D-Bob. The support Rudy gets along the way from Fortune, in Fortune seeing Rudy rise, is an emotional win in the friendship won for these two as well.
(Writer Angelo Pizzo, left, and director David Anspaugh helped bring the film Rudy to the big screen).
David Anspaugh directed Rudy, which was written for film by Angelo Pizzo, who worked together on the film Hoosiers (1986). Rudy offers the emotional uplift that Hoosiers does while offering a similar origin story with a different feeling on the subject of redemption. The means of delivering an emotionally gratifying story that uses the sport of football to tell us something about the power of dreams, heart and determination, along with the costs of getting there in the face of pragmatism, are heartwarming. I give Rudy 4-stars on a scale of one-to-five.
Matt – Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Matt Lynn Digital 