If you want someone to make a sports movie then let it be Disney, by far the best at this genre. They are tricky movies to make and America are the only ones to really achieve in the field, so to speak. The less said about British sports movies the better. The real sports events themselves are a far better idea for drama here so we leave well alone. Films like Goal and When Saturday Comes are wasting everyone's time.

For a Disney film the narrative and dialect here are not too childish and if you watched National Treasure with Nicholas Cage over the holidays you will know what I mean when I say that. Although the story is a simple rag to riches one it is based on a true story of golfing history and so works on many levels, Shia LeBeouf, excellent in the lead role as Francis Quimet, the young aspiring amateur golfer who is forced from the game he loves by rules and snobbery, but is finally entered in the 1913 US Open to face the all-conquering British challenge from great champion Harry Vardon, he too a victim of class victimisation in his country.

Shia LaBeouf ... Francis Ouimet
Jonathan Higgins ... Embry Wallis
Stephen Marcus ... Ted Ray
Matthew Knight ... Young Francis Ouimet
Josh Flitter ... Eddie Lowery
Stephen Dillane ... Harry Vardon
Amanda Tilson ... Young Sarah Wallis
Peyton List ... Sarah Wallis
Elias Koteas ... Arthur Ouimet
James Paxton ... Young Harry Vardon
Jamie Merling ... Young Louise Ouimet
Eugenio Esposito ... Young Raymond Ouimet
Marnie McPhail ... Mary Ouimet
Jeremy Thibodeau ... Raymond Ouimet

Young Harry Vardon, the great British champion, grew up next to a golf course, the game in his soul, but not from the right social class to ever be accepted by the sport he excels in, run by toffs and businessmen. When Vardon (Stephen Dillane) is appointed a club pro at a prestigious course he is also asked by the British golfing establishment to return to America 13 years after his first victory in the US Open to try and win it back for the honour of the country and the club. He will be joined on the boat by big hitting, cigar smoking, boozing talking Scottish champ Embray Wallis (Jonathan Higgins).

Although his mom Mary (Marnie McPhail) is fully behind his dream dad Arthur (Elias Koteas) isn't, a chip on the shoulder the size of the one young Quimet will have to play to even get near the 18th at Brookline. Dad thinks golf is not for the likes of them although agrees to lend his boy the $50 entrance fee for the qualifying tournament if he gives up the game and learns a proper trade if he doesn't qualify. Frances reluctantly agrees and tees up on the first, only allowed around the rules because of a sympathetic benefactor and club member who thinks the boy has the game to test the best.

Once the two Americans and two Brits are safely in the field to battle it out for the 1913 US open the film finds its gear box. Poor Francis can't get a caddy though and so ends up with a little schoolboy friend carrying the bag, Eddie Lowery (Josh Flitter), bringing further mirth on the audacious attempt for a 20-year-old caddy to even contemplate mixing it with the best in the world in the Open. But this is the movies and Francis is soon climbing the leaderboard...

This is a Disney film guys and so needs tension and so some scenes are altered for the good of that although the events actually happened in roughly the right order and so it has credibility. Whether it's a story anyone cares about outside of golf is another matter. I'm sure they will make the Tiger Woods story at that amazing 1997 Masters fifty years from now and so it falls into that category.
Shia LeBeouf (cruelly nicknamed Shi*e LeBeouf by some film hacks) is rather two dimensional in the lead role but still Carries it off well bringing through the innocence of the kid at the time. No characters have any depth in the film to be honest as this is a family sports movie of rags to riches. I don't need tell you the ending as I'm sure you can work it out.