Better than diamond rings
Football
Wildcats is a 1986 comedy film directed by Michael Ritchie, starring Goldie Hawn and costarring Jan Hooks and Swoosie Kurtz. It also features LL Cool J and is the film debut of Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson.
Molly McGrath (Hawn) is the daughter of a famed football coach who's dying to head her own team. Molly leaves her job coaching girls' track at an affluent high school after she gets passed over for the position of football coach, the reason being that she is a woman, even though her father taught her his brilliant football tactics and she knows the game far better than the man they hired. In frustration she accepts an offer to take over a football team at Central High School, a Chicago inner-city high school.
At first the new coach’s idealism and optimism are suffocated with racial and gender prejudice, but eventually her indomitable spirit and very real skill begin to whip her unruly team into shape. At the same time, she must also struggle to win a battle for the custody of her two young daughters. The real test for Molly comes when Central High team faces her old school in the city championship.
Tropes:
- Actually, I Am Him: Byrd turns out to be Levander Williams, the star quarterback who quit the team the season before Molly became the coach.
- Big Game: The climactic city championship between Central and Prescott.
- A Father to His Men: Coach McGrath is a Gender Flipped Inversion of this Always Male character trope.
- Graceful Loser: When the previous quarterback, Levander Williams, returns to the team, Krushinski has to give up his spot without Williams even having to try out. (Somewhat foreshadowed by Krushinski admitting in the scene where the principal suggests tracking down Levander that he's not the best candidate for the position.)Krushinski: Guess I'm out of a job, huh?
Coach McGrath: Guess so.
Krushinski: ...I ever tell you what a good slotback I am?
Coach McGrath: You're hired. - Handshake Refusal: Double subverted at the end. After Molly's team wins the city championship, the opposing coach — enraged at losing to a woman — refuses to come shake her hand. But her players will have none of it; Finch picks him up and carries him kicking and screaming across the field—only for Molly to insist that if he doesn't want to, he doesn't have to shake her hand, and to put him down. Finch drops him in a puddle.
- Hot for Teacher: Underplayed. Several team members are clearly attracted to Coach McGrath, but it undermines their ability to take her seriously as a coach. After she demonstrates she's good enough, the unwanted flirting stops.
- Ms. Fanservice: Goldie's tub scene leaves little to the imagination.
- Use Your Head: One of the students on the football team tries to break into a locker by using his head and ends up getting a concussion.
- Token White: Harrelson's Krushinski
- Your Mom: Courtesy of the Central High School cheerleaders:U-G-L-Y
You ain't got no alibi
You ugly
M-A-M-AHow you think you got that wayYo Mama - The Wildcats: You'd like to know what Central High's mascot is, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you? You'll just have to watch the movie to find out.
