Sean McNamara

Few American directors are simultaneously this prolific and this invisible. McNamara works almost entirely inside the family, faith and underdog-sports market, where reviews barely matter and delivery does. Born in Burbank in 1962, he produced the children's series Kids Incorporated from the mid-eighties into the nineties, made his directing debut on the independent Hollywood Chaos in 1989, and later produced Nickelodeon's The Secret World of Alex Mack.

The nineties and 2000s were franchise maintenance: Casper: A Spirited Beginning, Casper Meets Wendy, 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, P.U.N.K.S, The Even Stevens Movie, The Suite Life Movie. Then Bratz in 2007, a film disliked thoroughly enough to become shorthand, and Soul Surfer in 2011, which is the one that landed: a true-story surfing drama that took his sincerity and put it somewhere audiences wanted it.

He is a specific kind of craftsman. The films are clean, fast, unironic and built to reassure, which is a genuine skill and also a ceiling. Spare Parts and The Miracle Season repeat the underdog structure with different sports and different budgets. Cats & Dogs 3 and The King's Daughter are work for hire. Reagan in 2024 is the largest thing he has directed and the most divisive.

One nice habit runs through the whole filmography: he gives himself walk-ons. A Rip Curl executive in Soul Surfer, Fuzzy Wolf in Spare Parts, Mr. Orange in The Cutting Edge: Going for the Gold, a blackjack dealer in Mighty Oak, a trucker in Soul on Fire. More than forty credits in, and he is still taking bit parts in his own pictures.