[7.3/10] *The U* is less a documentary than it is a fluff piece. Billy Corben does a nice job at charting the ascension of University of Miami football in the eighties and nineties, connecting it to the culture of South Beach and taking note of its connection to black communities in particular in the area. But it’s about as critical and even-handed a look at the team as a birthday card to Jimmy Johnson.

Now look, this is sports, not history, so it’s no grand sin if the movie offers more of a lovefest to a particular program than a fulsome look at both its greatness and its faults. But to hear Billy Corden tell it (or at least his positive and negative edits that go largely unchallenged), The U was the greatest college football program of all time; any criticism of the team was unfair; it single-handedly put the University of Miami on the map, and it even solve racial tensions in the city. There is nothing the midas touch of the Hurricanes on the gridiron couldn’t fix, on the movie’s account.

Accusations of poor sportsmanship? That’s just sour grapes. Off-the-field misconduct? The naysayers just didn’t understand how *real* these players and coaches were. Concerns about the school as an academic institution? Nothing but the prattle of a bunch of stuffed shirt, ivory tower eggheads.

If you can make your peace, as I did, with the fact that this is more a ninety minute exercise in plainly affectionate hagiography rather than a genuine work of documentary filmmaking, it’s an enjoyable outlay of sports journalism. Evenhanded or not, the movie puts Miami’s program and place in the community into context, and charts some of the memorable games, faces, and figures of the program’s history in the effort.

Corben gets all manner of noteworthy personalities from the school’s athletic history to comment for his film. That leads to some great first-hand accounts of what it felt like to be inside the program straight from the horse’s mouth. And the closest thing to scrutiny that *The U* provides is when Corben and his team include instances of players or coaches trying to puff themselves up or excuse themselves for this or that, only to stumble into telling bits of unintentional self-indictment.

Still, if you can take this as a fond and ever-charitable look back at one of college football’s signature dynasties, as apt to have been prepared as a promotion by the university itself rather than a theoretically neutral journalistic outlet, it is still a lot of fun, full of engaging personalities and anecdotes, spiced up with some quality historical footage and good production. It’s not as good as some of the more ambitious 30 for 30 documentaries, but it’s still a good watch for college football fans.