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List Price: $26.95 | | Label: KINO INTERNATIONAL
Salesrank: 2633
Released: August 4, 2009 |
| Our Price: $19.85 |
| Used Price: $19.37 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
An incredible true story that unfolds like a ripping good yarn... With an uproarious, impossible Hollywood ending (Andrew O Hehir, Salon.com), Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 is filmmaker Kevin Rafferty s (The Atomic Cafe) acclaimed documentary depicting one of the most legendary games in the history of sports. Harvard Stadium November 23, 1968. With Vietnam raging, Nixon in the White House, and issues from civil rights to women's lib dividing the country, Harvard and Yale, both teams undefeated for the first time since 1909, meet for the annual climax of the Ivy League football season. On the blue-blooded Yale campus, gridiron fever has made local celebrities out of a Yale team led by quarterback Brian Dowling, who hadn t lost a game that he finished since the 7th grade, and who was the role model for Doonesbury s B.D. At civil unrest scarred Harvard, a melting pot team of working class players, antiwar activists, and a decorated Vietnam vet set aside their differences for the Big Game. Together, Yale and Harvard stage an unforgettable football contest that baffled even their own coaches. Using vintage game footage and bracingly honest contemporary interviews with the players from both sides, including Harvard lineman and future Oscar® winner Tommy Lee Jones (No Country for Old Men), Rafferty crafts an alternately suspenseful, hilarious, and poignant portrait of American lives, American sports, and American ideals both tested on the playing field and transformed by turbulent times.
Special Features:
- Bonus Interviews (73 min.) Additional interview excerpts not included in the film, the players provide a deeper look at the season, the game, and its aftermath.
- Theatrical Trailer
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 Reviews:
A unique documentary about the social setting of a great college footbal game 
2009-11-13 - The 1968 Harvard-Yale football game is rightfully considered one of the greatest in the history of college football. The game that is virtually always rated the greatest game ever occurred the next with Arkansas and Texas, rated #2 and #1 playing the last regular season game of the first one hundred years of college football, with Billy Graham giving the opening prayer and Richard Nixon giving the trophy after the game. And while that game will long be considered the best, largely because of the unrepeatable circumstances surrounding the game. But to be perfectly honest, for sheer entertainment, the Yale-Harvard game was better. What makes this documentary so great is not that it does a fine job of recounting one of the classic games, complete with interviews with most of the key figures in the game (sadly Calvin Hill, the player from the game with the most successful pro career, did not participate in the film), but that it recreates the large social setting of the day. The ending is one of the most famous in the history of college football, but what gives it so much impact in this film is getting the reaction of the players to the game and learning what their situation away from the field was. The overall result is one of the most entertaining films that I've seen in quite a while.
One of the things that makes the film so much fun is that the players included some familiar people. Brian Dowling remains one of the most famous Ivy League players ever while Calvin Hill enjoyed a memorable career with the Dallas Cowboys. Actor Tommy Lee Jones, who played for Harvard, is one of the interviewees. And famous people were lingering on the edges. One player was dating Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones was rooming with Al Gore, and one player had roomed with George W. Bush, who had graduated from Yale the previous spring.
On a pure football note, it is interesting to see that had Yale taken care of the football, they would have won with ease. Key fumbles led to Harvard scores and prevented Yale ones. I was delighted watching the replays of famous Yale QB Brian Dowling. I knew that he was the basis for the character BD in the Doonesbury comic strip, but I had never actually seen any extended footage of him playing. He was an incredibly exciting player to watch, a Roger Staubauch/Fran Tarkenton type scrambler who was brilliant at finding receivers as he ran around in the backfield. Going into the game Dowling had the distinction of never having lost a football game. And despite the title of the film, he never did.
Harvard-Yale 29/29
2009-11-11 - Unable to personally review it because I bought it as a gift for my husband. He had specifically requested it as a Christmas gift after seeing a review for it in a magazine which gave two thumbs up!
Absolutely riveting, and great fun
2009-10-31 - I was a 1L at the Harvard Law School, and I was there on that brilliant afternoon in November of 1968, having managed to snag a ticket from a friend in the Harvard Marching Band. What started as a dispiriting rout ended with total strangers screaming and hugging after Harvard's improbable comeback. Many commentators touted Yale's superior talent as a team, but this was not at all the case. There was, indeed, one world-class athlete on the field that afternoon, Yale's Calvin Hill, who would have been a standout anywhere, including places such as Southern Cal, Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State, the SEC and SWC (if they'd allowed black players back in the day). But after Hill, the teams were fairly evenly matched. Are there ghosts and spirits that haunt Soldier Field in Cambridge? No question about it. This is a wonderful film, not to be missed.
for me, this was a total waste of time 
2009-09-06 - I hope you like Ivy League football, because this documentary is about little else.
Since it made many critics' top ten lists for 2009, I was eager to see it, but the whole time I was for some reason thinking it was about something more than just the famous Harvard-Yale football game of 1968.
Now sure, that's one of the greatest college football games of all time. Right up until about halftime, Yale was leading 22-0, and Harvard came back in the second half to tie 29-29. So euphoric was the Harvard Crimson that the next morning they ran the headline "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29," which is where the title of the film comes from.
But since so many critics loved it, I thought there had to be something deeper to it, the way When We Were Kings was about more than just the Ali-Foreman fight: it was about the brimming over of social attitudes in the 60's.
I thought this DVD would be something like that, but no. It really is just about the football game, nothing more, which limited its interest for me. Sure, some of the interviewees mention things that were going on in the late 60's, such as the sexual revolution and Vietnam, but they're not really woven into the narrative in any meaningful way.
If that legendary Harvard-Yale game ever stood for something more than itself, I have yet to be enlightened.
If you're curious enough to read these reviews, you won't be disappointed!
2009-09-04 - This film is simply incredible. It's captivating and will keep you on the edge of your seat. If you have the slightest interest in reading these product reviews, then you should simply stop and get the DVD. You'll love it. The story has it all - the superstar, the introvert, the enforcer, Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury, Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Al Gore, George Bush, student life in the late 60s (Vietnam, student protests, life on campus as an athlete), the camaraderie of athletes working together, and the bravado-free honesty of the former players discussing the anxiety of on-field pressure. Very well done!
