‘Harvard Beats Yale’ is mostly a kick

Of all the quirky facts to emerge in the gridiron documentary "Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29," one stands out: Meryl Streep dated a football player.

It's true. In 1968 the Vassar theater major made road trips to hang out with a Yale no-neck, a fullback who blocked for future Cowboy Calvin Hill.

She also spent time papering the campus with "Hell no, we won't go" posters, which seems more in character, and is also one of the details that make "Harvard/Yale" an interesting study of time and place.

In his bare-bones documentary, director Kevin Rafferty interviews a dozen or so players involved in the game (featured in archival color footage), allowing them ample room to ramble, capturing some offbeat anecdotes - the players drop as many names as they do footballs (the game hinged on a surplus of turnovers).

Actor Tommy Lee Jones was a guard for Harvard, he roomed with former vice president Al Gore, who knew how to play "Dixie" on the new Touch-Tone phones. Ex-President George Bush was an undergrad at Yale where Gary Trudeau was a cartoonist who poked fun at football players.

Rafferty also tries to capture the tumultuous mood of the times - many players (particularly at Harvard) were anti-war, while others were Vietnam vets who'd volunteered to serve. Off the field, the factions co-existed uneasily.

Football was both uniter and pressure valve, and there was of course no bigger game for either campus than Harvard-Yale, particularly in 1968, when Harvard actually had a team that could compete against the New Haven, Conn., powerhouse.

Yale didn't realize this until it was too late, though there was an early bad omen: a white-clad male cheerleader attempts to jump a line of colleagues standing on their heads with their legs spread into a Yale "Y," and lands right on the last guy's boolah-boolahs.

Rafferty's early attempt to paint a sociopolitical picture dissolves as the drama of the game takes hold - a classic study of an overconfident team ambushed by an angry, overlooked underdog.

Yale has a two-touchdown lead with a few minutes remaining, and its players are as relaxed and smug as the hanky-waving fans. What follows is one of those scenarios that give competitive sports such timeless appeal. Arrogance leads to lax play, a surrender of intensity that can somehow never be recaptured, and Yale sees its fate being written by an unfriendly hand that can't be stayed.

That comes through beautifully. As does something else - a very clear sense of why Jones is such a pain in the butt to interview. *

Produced, wr*tten and d*rected by Kev*n Rafferty, d*str*buted by Emerg*ng P*ctures.