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91Undefeated puts us inside his locker room, and you simply cannot fail to be moved by the human affection, commitment and passion you feel there.
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90Undefeated is a genuine crowd-pleaser, a rousing and inspirational flowers-in-the-junkyard fable of hope and possibility in grim circumstances.
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88Absorbing, inspiring and terrifically entertaining, Undefeated earns its title: It's a winner all the way.
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88Undefeated is an emotional and effective film.
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88Deftly balancing the students' stories with that of Courtney's, the film creates a fully rounded portrait of a corner of America rarely examined.
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83I wish the directors had emphasized more of the players' personal lives apart from the football field. But, in the end, this is a documentary about Courtney and the transformative powers of caring. He works wonders on his players and they reciprocate.
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83For a documentary that's almost engineered to lift your heart, Undefeated is very well done.
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80While Undefeated travels well-tilled inspirational ground, it's also an irresistible story of football, faith and the lust for happily-ever-after black-and-white endings.
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80The ultimate praise given to sports movies is always, "Even if you don't care about sport X, you'll care about these characters," and that's certainly true of Undefeated (I don't, and I did).
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80Like all memorable sports documentaries - Undefeated is really an examination not of how games are won and lost but how lives are lived, how young people faced with daunting challenges come to see, often in the most dramatic fashion, what is important going forward and what is not.
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80There are plenty of unexpected moments within this stirring film, but it's no surprise at all that it's been tapped to compete for a Best Documentary Oscar next Sunday.
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Feb 16, 201280Its triumphs are bittersweet, but they're irresistible.
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80Moments like these turn the documentary Undefeated into a far greater thing than a real-life "The Blind Side" - it's diving deeply into knotty matters of patience and parenting, along with plenty of unfixables as well.
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Feb 14, 201280It's impossible not to root for these guys, or to leave Undefeated without feeling enormously moved by the experience of their joys and disappointments.
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80Enjoyably upbeat and intelligently inspiring.
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80It's a stirring mix of sports and human drama that exudes an almost earthy sense of genuineness.
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75Unlike the benchmark sports documentary "Hoop Dreams," Undefeated doesn't have a deep penetration of poverty and race in its playbook, but it does have enough heart to make substantial forward progress.
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75Undefeated is filled with wonderful narratives, which impressed academy voters enough to garner an Academy Award this week. It's a credit to directors Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Daniels that the personal stories of the kids and coaches resonate more than the wins and losses.
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75Undefeated is undeniably inspirational stuff.
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75It's common for coaches to take roles as father figures on a high-school and college level, but Undefeated gets into how that dynamic works on both ends, as Courtney seeks to salve the pain of his family history.
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70Undefeated is well-edited by director Daniel Lindsay and beautifully photographed by his co-director T.J. Martin - the shacks of North Memphis look poetically disheveled as shot from a moving car - but it is telling that the coach emerges as the "star" of this documentary.
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67Even though the film relies on many of the clichés of the form, Undefeated is a masterfully crafted work that honestly scores a touchdown.
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63The movie charts its nine-game winning streak and post-season. If there's a problem, it's that there are too few moments like that one with Chavis in the locker room.
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63Compared to many of last year's documentaries (Pina, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, Cave of Forgotten Dreams or The Interrupters), this film is distinctly minor league. But it does provide the thumbs-up emotional lift of a bumper-sticker message on game day.
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63What sets Undefeated apart from the usual underdog sports story is how the filmmakers emphasize the importance of mentorship as something separate from on-the-field interactions between coach and player.
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60Familiar territory, especially if you've seen "Hoop Dreams" and "Friday Night Lights," but the intimate style offers its own rewards.
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50One of the reasons documentaries often take so long to make is the filmmakers' need to keep their subject from giving a performance. They want something genuine, something that materializes only when the camera disappears. Nothing Mr. Courtney is says is inaccurate or, God knows, dishonest. But it isn't quite true either.
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40Honestly, Courtney and his crew all seem like nice people, but if there's an unironic audience for this kind of romantic jock-cup fondling, I'm not interested in knowing it.
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25This indie documentary is egregiously Hollywood in spirit. That a take-charge white football coach can buck up a place like Manassas HS with some gridiron grit is a lie we want to believe.