A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

What: “Rudy”

Price: $9.95

“Rudy,” released in 1993, is the type of movie you have to talk people into watching. I have owned a copy for years, and when people looking through my collection notice that it’s a movie about a kid who wants to play football for Notre Dame, they quickly put it back. So I tell them to take it home and watch it at at their leisure. A few days later it’s returned, with the message: “Thanks for making me take that movie with me. It was great.” That has happened several times.

“Rudy” stars Sean Astin as Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, whose dream is to play for the Fighting Irish. He doesn’t expect to be a star, he just wants to wear the uniform and get on the field during one game.

Everyone thinks his dream is foolish. His family and his teachers assure him that he lacks the size to play football, and the brains to attend college. But Rudy persists. And yes, you can guess the ending about two minutes into the movie, especially since it’s based on a true story. That doesn’t diminish the movie.

Astin is the perfect choice to play Rudy. His acting is so focused and low-key that you forget the underdog formula and get caught up in the story of a determined kid. This is thanks in large part to the script by Angelo Pizzo, and the direction of David Anspaugh, the same team that made “Hoosiers.”

Pizzo has a gift for making all the characters he writes three-dimensional, even the ones who are on screen for moments, such as Fortune (Charles Dutton), a groundskeeper at Notre Dame Stadium who is the only one to encourage Rudy, and the understanding priest (Robert Prosky).

Anspaugh directs with a close attention to the people in the film. Unlike most sports films, which give way to manufactured happy moments on the field of play, Anspaugh turns his films into character studies, and the audience is richer for it.

So yes, you can guess how the movie ends, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the ride, and if you still have a dry eye at the closing scene, perhaps you should stop watching movies.