The team works against its limitations to compete against a racist white team headed by a magnificently miscast Arnold. A few setbacks, some funny time-outs from Mac as a crotchety rec-center employee, some self-discovery, and it's the Big Match and, well, take it from there.
Pride has something working against it that other sports films don't: an incredibly uncinematic sport. Mostly, first-time helmer Gonera deals with the lack of dazzlement in people splashing to and fro by settling on largely inert medium shots. Between Howard's passionate performance and the film's generous vibe, one wants to forgive the lapse. Until one recalls that Scorsese, in The Color of Money, managed to render pool—as in balls and cues, the dullest sport outside of golf—visually exciting.
As annoying as Gonera's lazy presentation of his sport is his craven injection every 10 minutes of played-out soul classics to make up for the excitement we're not getting in the story. The blah soundtrack choices are emblematic of what's amiss: It's one thing to acknowledge and perhaps transcend a genre's restrictions; it's another to embrace them as if they were the newly minted coin of the realm.
And so we get Ellis' one character defect—a bad temper nurtured by being treated like crap by white folks in a 1964 prologue—tidily overcome in time for the Big Meet. We get the local wannabe drug dealer, who glowers when some threat is needed and disappears from the film when it isn't. And so on.
What we're missing is a sense of possible tragedy and consequences that can't be glossed over with an O'Jays tune. Maybe that's what ultimately sinks Pride—there is never a millisecond's doubt that all involved will suffer anything but a unidirectional path to the prize, or that doing so will cost anyone anything.