Sooner or later, there has be a moratorium on Sam Rockwell playing schlubby losers; the guy has a gallery of them at this point that even Philip Seymour Hoffman can't compete with. But for now, let's savor one of his best ones--that of Bill, the drunken girls' basketball coach in James C. Strouse's conventional, but good-natured, bid to make Hoosiers for the Gossip Girl set (it even features GG's cutie-pie faced Connor Paolo in a small role).

Rockwell, as adept a physical actor as you can fathom, can turn unctuous when let a little too loose (Iron Man 2, anyone?)--but when he's allowed to blend sensitivity into his offhanded, ironic style, he is a dream, and one would have never thought that a pic like this one would allow him to exhibit so much range. First seen busing tables and fending off his re-married ex (Jessica Hecht) while trying to be a model dad to his surly teen daughter (Shana Dowdeswell), he is roped into coaching girls' basketball by a high school principal (Rob Corddry, with not much to do here). The broken-down Bill is reluctant at first, then dives head-on to bettering his small squad. (Emma Roberts leads the pack--though she has all the onscreen athleticism of, say, latter-day Kirk Douglas.) Strouse (who also penned the script) hits all the cliché markers of teen sports pictures, but Rockwell somehow manages to smash right through them, even while lamenting his charges as “bored-looking girls waiting for the tits to come in.”

The movie falters when trying to dramatize Bill's strained relations with his family, and Strouse never really knows what to do with Hecht's character, who looks like she wants to jump Rockwell every time they meet--surely not what they were going for. And the subplot about Corddry's daughter (a key teammate) exploring lesbian tendencies could have been coaxed with more care, as could have the other supporting females, some of whom have very little by way of character to go on. But there is a more than fair amount of measured sweetness in the film, best personified in Margo Martindale's warm supporting turn as Rockwell's unlikely assistant coach.

The Winning Season has been sitting on the shelf for almost two years (maybe distributors shared some of the film's grumpy notions about nobody caring about female sports), but that shouldn't deter prospective viewers. Films more traditional have won major awards, and one of the refreshing aspects of this one is it has no aspirations to importance. And they certainly do not have the comic payoff of Rockwell describing the meaning of an “onion butt”—it’s the kind of bona fide gut-buster this dude was just created for.

Sum...ology: Good game, good game.