Review: Safety

The Disney+ original movie, “Safety”, released on Dec. 11, is based on a true story, about Ray McElrathbey (Jay Reeves) who receives a full scholarship to play football for the Clemson Tigers, but when his mother (Amanda Warren) is sent to a rehab program, he takes in his 11 year old brother Fahmarr (Thaddeus J. Mixson).

The introduction to the plot is very funny and attention grabbing, as Ray moves to Clemson and gets his bearings as an athlete, training camp, and his first semester of classes. However, it’s not always lighthearted as it looks at the beginning. It shows the real life struggles of a student athlete at a competitive school trying to balance their studies and around the clock practices and games.      

The plot does start to escalate slightly when Ray’s coaches on the football team find out about Ray’s situation and start to question if he should be able to keep his scholarship due to the controversy it could produce with the NCAA.

The NCAA has strict rules on student-athletes taking money or any financial aid of any kind from anyone other than the school. The climax of the movie was when the NCAA was informed that Ray was being helped out by the local community after word spread about his situation. They were concerned that this could be controversial and debated if his scholarship would be at stake.

The actors in the movie do a wonderful job portraying the people in real life that you forget that it isn’t a documentary. The transition between events allows the movie to flow and captivate the audience, and make the plot easy to follow.

The true story takes place in 2006, however, while watching the movie it can sometimes be easy to forget that. Although there are an amazing amount of early 2000’s pop culture references to remind you, many of the extras’ outfits are not as authentic.

Within the first 5 minutes of the movie I already knew that it would be one of my favorites. It’s a feel good movie that is great for all ages and all demographics, sports fans, families, and comedy movie lovers, and everybody in between. It shines a light on the struggles that many families face and it has a great representation of different backgrounds.