HBO's Kick Like A Girl

HBO has long provided a home for well-made and thought-provoking documentaries - films that often have a difficult time finding the audience they so justly deserve.

Films such as Taxi to the Dark Side, Thrilla in Manilla, The Trials of Ted Haggard, Death on a Factory Farm, and the new Oscar-winning documentary, Smile Pinki, have all kept the cable network's reputation alive as one of the best sources for non-fiction programming.

Sometimes the documentaries aren't worth watching, such as Shot in the Dark, Entourage star Adrian Grenier's film about the search for his father. Other times they're good but rather slight. Such is the case of the new 25-minute documentary short, Kicks Like a Girl.

Kicks Like a Girl, directed by Jenny Mackenzie, tells the story of a young girls' soccer team in Salt Lake City. The team, the Mighty Cheetahs, was the girls league champion two years in a row and so their coach offered her young charges the option of joining the boys' league, a challenge they readily accepted.

The movie interviews the girls on the Cheetahs, as well as the coach and parents, who initially questioned the merits of playing against their male counterparts. But as the girls begin to win game after game, it forces the girls, and their opponents to reconsider previously held notions that the boys would be stronger, faster and better.

Most of the footage in the documentary is fairly grainy, showing the Cheetahs and their opponents competing in their season of games. The interviews with the young girls, who appear to be about nine or ten years old, finds them wise, grounded and quite endearing.

While most adults would probably be more interested in a documentary chronicling the accomplishments of the women who've dared to challenge their male counterparts in college and professional sports, Kicks Like a Girl is still an entertaining little film.

For younger children and family audiences, this documentary should be considered essential viewing, as it provides a wonderful true-life look at girls daring to compete against boys and doing so quite successfully. Even the boys interviewed at the end of the documentary have come to learn that kicking like a girl can actually be a compliment.

One hopes this documentary finds its way into elementary and intermediate schools around the country, where teachers can use it as a useful educational tool.