Movie of the Week: Mudbloods

Alexa: To know me is to know my obsession with all things Harry Potter, so naturally I thoroughly enjoyed “Mudbloods.” I picked this movie to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” and it certainly captures what a massive impact the series has had since then. Part sports doc and part tribute to the fandom, “Mudbloods” follows the UCLA Quidditch team’s journey to the fifth annual Quidditch World Cup in New York. For the uninitiated, Muggle Quidditch is the non-magical adaptation of the wizard sport, and it’s grown into a massively popular endeavor. Sure, everyone on the team featured here is a big Harry Potter nerd, but the movie does a solid job of conveying that this a contact sport that requires some actual athletic ability and strategy. I found the animation explaining the rules of the game particularly effective. Harry Potter fans will still get the most out of this doc, but I think there is something there for non-fans as well. My only real gripe with it is the random storyline about the Harry Potter mega-fan. I get following the World Cup organizer alongside the main UCLA team storyline, but I’m not sure what purpose the “No. 1 fan” served. We briefly see her attend the World Cup, but otherwise she’s not really relevant to the rest of the film. Her massive collection of Harry Potter paraphernalia is visually interesting and she captures what makes the series so special to so many people, but the players do a fine job of that on their own. I think there are other ways the filmmakers could have achieved that angle without taking such a detour from the main subjects. “Mudbloods” is a bit rough around the edges, but overall it’s an endearing tale that celebrates the series’ love for underdogs who never lose sight of who they are and what they stand for.

Joel: What really makes this documentary work is when we finally get to the Quidditch World Cup, the movie plays out as a sports documentary. There’s a lot of talk in the first half of the movie about what Harry Potter means to people, both as a book series and the culture surrounding it. We see people talk about falling in love with the series and the characters, and we see them struggle with the fact that their chosen sport is one that is going to come with a large amount of ridicule thanks to the origin of the sport. But once we get to the tournament aspect of the movie, that whole part of the narrative is dropped. The movie doesn’t take any more time to focus on the sport’s origin from a fantasy series, and instead treats it as they would any other sport. And because we’ve taken the time to set up how quidditch works, you can follow the drama on the pitch just as you would any other sport.

And as a sports documentary, this really works. It’s all there. You have a group of scrappy underdogs traveling across the country to get their chance at gory. You have the four time champion team. You have injuries on the field. You have action that you can genuinely categorize as nail biting. Because the movie has so much footage of actual quidditch being played, by the time you’re watching the later games being played, there’s enough there for you to start to be able see the player’s strategy and have opinions on how they should be playing, just as you would any other sport.

The parts of this movie that don’t work as well are when it drifts away from the sport of quidditch itself to focus on a more general love of Harry Potter. That isn’t to say that Harry Potter isn’t something that should be treasured, but the move works so much better with it’s not a love letter to all things Harry Potter, but is instead purely focused on this subculture that’s grown around this sport. Then again, the movie does run a little short as is, and it’s very possible that some of these parts were added to help pad out the runtime. They aren’t really bad segments, as they do show you how much of an impact these books have had on an entire generation of children, but there’s no question that this movie works the best when quidditch specifically is the focus.

Chris: I wanted more quidditch. Maybe some more establishing shots of the pitch as a game was going on, especially during the championship game since it was being played in an arena with taller stands. I wanted more profiles on individual players other than just the coach guy and the rappers. Do all of those things to make the documentary longer and then completely cut out the Harry Potter number 1 fan because the only thing she accomplishes is to boost her own ego. Her involvement started off as if she was introduced to be a knowledgeable authority on Harry Potter fandom but her input is minimal in that role and is done way better by the quidditch players themselves and the commissioner. Her segments seem to have very little to do with the sport itself until she manages to finally make it to the tournament and chooses to root for a smaller team and acts like that's a great honor that can be bestowed upon them. If they could just re-cut this movie and leave just the quidditch and player profiles, this would be a golden documentary that would blend in well with the high quality ESPN 30 for 30 sports documentaries also on Netflix.

Jason: There was more heart, story, and emotion in the last 20 minutes of this documentary than there was in the entirety of last week’s movie. Everyone loves an underdog story. And this story is not just about an underdog team going to a big tournament. It's about an underdog sport that no one really ever thought would be a big deal. We had a Quidditch team at UNCG when we were there and I knew a couple of the players. It was a club more than a real team. They played against each other and didn't have any aspirations for what they could do with it. I wish I had had time to be a part of it when I was there. This doc shows just how big it has gotten, and keep in mind, the World Cup they showed took place in 2011. Since then, the sport has become something far beyond what those original Harry Potter fans could have hoped for.

As for the film itself, I like that it shows different kinds of fans participating in different ways. In any other context, some of those guys would be called meatheads and jocks but here they're running around with brooms between their knees. I love that it shows the physicality and skill required to play this sport and even showed the consequences of its full contact gameplay. This film could have easily made these athletes out to be just some random super fans doing something silly but it was instead able to show a whole new sport being built from the ground up into real thing.