This is a movie with a warm “feel good” ending and features a good story. It’s unfortunate that the film contains a few items which drive it over the top of our acceptability level for family-friendly viewing.

George Dryer (Gerard Butler) was a soccer star and the movie opens with three of his impressive goals from 1993, 1996 and 2005. However, an ankle injury shortens his career and now he is at a place in life in which he comes back into his son and ex-wife’s lives and he lobbies for a sports reporting job for TV. He has grown up a lot and is an easy-going affable guy. Unexpectedly he winds up coaching his son Lewis’s (Noah Lomax) soccer team, following the excitement from the kids when he steps in at a practice one day to offer them soccer tips. The team, the Cyclones, begin to improve under his tutorage. One of the film’s charms is when the various parents leave phone messages for Coach George, encouraging him to play their kids or, in one case, a dad wants George to make sure his daughter sings the National Anthem.

George still has feelings for his ex, Denise (Jessica Biel), and it is obvious she reciprocates those feelings but she is engaged to be married to a man named Matt and she puts on a tough exterior. It doesn’t help that several of the kids’ moms find George attractive and indeed he ends up sleeping with two of them when they push the issue but he turns down an offer from a married mom who is lonely due to her husband’s philandering.

The story includes themes of the importance of family and responsibilities but the sexual situations and innuendos not to mention the use of a “Da*n you” by a character halts this one short of receiving our Dove Seal for family-friendly viewing.