Admit it — you love Rudy
As we wander our way through life, we encounter all manner of guilty pleasures. Some — say, watching reality television or consuming fast food — can be said to properly induce feelings of guilt, but many others really ought to make no claim on our conscience. Surely the least guilty of all guilty pleasures is the cinematic subgenre known as the inspirational sports movie. This perfectly respectable form has spawned countless enduring films, from National Velvet to Rocky. Their makers recognized that few things rouse an audience like the spectacle of an underdog mastering an athletic pursuit. With the 1986 release of Hoosiers, filmmaker David Anspaugh presented himself as the most gifted modern practitioner of the form.
