Alex Morgan will play herself in a kids’ movie about soccer

In every great athlete’s career there comes a moment when they have to make a choice: do I branch out and try to make a movie/rap album, or do I just stay in my lane? The time has now come for Alex Morgan, who will play herself in a direct-to-DVD movie called Alex & Me starring a Nickelodeon kidlet named Siena Agudong. Agudong plays Reagan, a young player who doesn’t make it on her local premier club team, then bonks her head and hallucinates Alex Morgan coming out of her lifesize poster. You can watch the trailer here.

Let’s break this down. First, Reagan is being lightly neglected by her family. The movie’s synopsis says she has a “prep football superstar brother,” and clearly his athletic career takes precedence over hers, so right away we have an unfortunately realistic gender dynamic found in too many households. Here the trailer shows us Reagan being ignored by her parents.

Of note: in a reverse shot we see that this is a customized Alex Morgan/#13 jersey. So WHY is it not a 3-star? Superfan Reagan is clearly aware of the significance of the stars and has plenty of 3-star merch decorating her room.

You’ll also note the framed away custom Morgan jersey, which, even if Reagan’s parents are neglecting her, they’re clearly still willing to spend some money on their daughter. This particular jersey cost $90 as a blank replica, and customization, shipping, and framing would put this probably around $150 minimum. That’s a nice gift for a kid. Moving on.

The main premise of the movie is that Reagan hits her head and when she wakes up, Alex Morgan steps out of her poster and begins helping Reagan improve as a soccer player and, we can presume, just generally the quality of her life.

Or, when you think about it, this poor kid gets a concussion so bad she begins hallucinating and doesn’t feel comfortable enough telling her parents that she is now seeing a full-size, walking, talking Alex Morgan following her around. Man, youth soccer has got to do a better job with concussion awareness training.

Hallucination-Alex tells Reagan she has to play this season, which is solid advice. So Reagan finds out about some poor underfunded and uncoached club named the Breakaways that practices in a dumpy field filled with dangerous construction equipment.

The film here is clearly illustrating the harsh nature of pay-to-play in the American youth club system. (Actually it would be very cool if the film touched on this in any kind of substantive way.) But Reagan and hallucination-Alex will definitely turn this team around because the climax of the film is clearly going to be Reagan helping her underdog club beat the team with the jerk coach and bully star player who knocked her down with a completely unnecessary shoulder charge during tryouts.

All goofs aside, this looks like an earnest, sweet kids’ movie, and girls can always use more positive sports films about themselves. Alex Morgan doesn’t have to do much but smile and be encouraging, and she’s pretty good at that. With Morgan parading around in an official USSF kit, this was no doubt made with the approval and help of US Soccer, who themselves probably love that Morgan now has even more cachet with the 7-13 girls age range. That doesn’t mean Morgan’s teammates shouldn’t roast her for any particularly scintillating moments of bad acting that might pop up, but you know what? At least Alex Morgan didn’t make Kazaam.