“From the ashes, we rose,” whispers the earnest narrator of this, the World Trade Center of college-football soapers. Based on the true story of the all-frosh season that followed a West Virginia team’s 1970 plane crash, We Are Marshall gets the McG treatment. Tugging the film into post-9/11 allegory, the flashmaster who brought us both Charlie’s Angels flicks squanders his primo period setting in favor of this-really-happened clichés involving the eager- beaver new coach (Matthew McConaughey), cautious college prez (David Strathairn), grieving girlfriend (Kate Mara), field-goal kicker brilliantly plucked from the soccer squad, etc. Vietnam, campus unrest, and racial tension merit not a single acknowledgment in a heal-your-heart movie that even overdubs Coach’s sacrilegious “damn” with a “darn” to complete the scrubbing. Most surprising is the fact McG, newly graduated to Storytelling 101, would strip the gridiron thrills to a bare minimum in order to emphasize his talky schmaltz; it’s as if he thought he was directing a Brian’s Song remake. Even by the low standards of the young-jocks-as-good-clean-soldiers movie, there’s little at stake, unless you count the kids’ hunger to win one for the Gipper. ROB NELSON