HARVARD BEATS YALE: A Call Me Snake Movie Review — by Steve Nadis
I recently saw the documentary, “Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29,” with a friend (who happens to be the brother of a noted blogger). It’s about a 1968 Harvard-Yale football game and one team’s dramatic comeback. The movie starts slow but picks up steam and is pretty compelling by the end. The biggest surprise, for me, was Tommy Lee Jones, who played in the football game (on the Harvard team) and is one of the talking heads frequently interviewed. Of all the characters in this film, he seemed like the worst actor given that his responses were extremely ponderous, filled with uncomfortable pauses, unlike other characters who you came to know and like over the course of the film. That’s the opposite of what I expected since Tommy Lee Jones can be a terrific actor (Coalminer’s Daughter), whereas these other people are not actors at all. The trouble was that he wasn’t playing an actor; he was playing a professorial Harvard egghead.
