Golf, an elitist sport long identified with “white privilege,” is challenged in “The Long Game,” a feel-good dramedy about a plucky team of Mexican-American kids who took on racist Texas and racist Texans in the 1950s and integrated golf in the process.

A very good cast, timely themes and Colombian (!?) locations that pass for Del Rio and environs in the mid ’50s recommend this formulaic film, based on a true story, whose script struggles with too many contrived conflicts and cloying touches for its own good.

Jay Hernandez takes a break from “Magnum, P.I.” to star s J.B. Peña, the new superintendent of the Mexican-American corner of Del Rio, where San Felipe High School resides. A WWII combat veteran (the script erroneously puts this Marine at Monte Cassino) starting a prestigious job, with a former commanding officer now the club pro (Dennis Quaid) putting in a good word for him, J.B. figures he can get into the prestigious Del Rio Country Club.

No dice. The members “are just not used to seeing a Mexican on the golf course,” the “my hands are tied” club director (Richard Robichaux) says with a sigh.

The only “Mexicans” there are the “invisible” groundskeeper, Pollo (Cheech Marin) and a group of five teens who caddy for rich white folks and their spoiled offspring.

Caddies Lupe, Felipe and Mario (José Julián, Miguel Ángel García and Christian Gallegos) enjoy the game enough to play “at” it on a piece of land next to the abandoned railroad tracks, where they’ve improvised a couple of holes. They even let hapless Gene (Gregory Diaz IV) in on their tips-driven gig and their fake course.

But it is the rebel Joe (Julian Works) who has the real skill and talent. It’s just that he’s the one who doesn’t let insults from the patronizing members of the club — “You boys watch the fingerprints when you load the car with the bags.” — pass. The racist judge (Brett Cullen, perfectly vile) is sure to have his car urinated on for his contempt.

When Superintendent J.B. ID’s the “golf” kids at San Felipe High, he sees a way of gaining “acceptance” in this “gentleman’s” sport — for himself, for the kids and those who follow. He recruits these cuffed-jean punks to form a golf team that will finagle its way into high school competition and integrate the sport and that one country club in the process.

Quaid’s Frank Mitchell will be their assistant coach, the one who works on their swings, nerves and short game while J.B. teaches them to tuck in their shirt tales, dress appropriately and “look right” according to golf’s “unwritten rules,” showing that they belong on the course with the priveleged white boys.

“No Spanish” on the course, either. J.B. is trying to Booker T. Washington the kids into acceptance.

But as they endure racial slurs and cheating, we have to figure that approach won’t work, and won’t last.

Director and co-writer Julio Quintana (Neflix’s “Blue Miracle,” starring Quain, was his) and his co-writers do a good job of showing us the limited horizons and circumscribed lives of these Latino teens. Even their principal (Oscar Nuñez from “The Office”) spends his time giving them “a taste of military discipline” because the military might be their only escape from “working the fields” in this corner of the world.

Joe’s disapproving Dad (Jimmy Gonzales) tells his boy “You’d better bring your sombrero” to this white world. “Whenever you’re invited to a gringo party, you’re either the entertainment or the help.”

Groundskeeper Pollo, wearing a cage to keep the members from “accidentally” pelting him with balls as he maintains the course, may be ironic when he talks about “knowing my place.” But J.B. sees “the long game,” getting white folks used to seeing “Mexicans playing golf,” making them figure out that “We’re more than just caddies and cannon fodder.”

Yes, this is preachy. The teen love story (featuring Paulina Chávez) is shoehorned in, as is a “couples” golf outing that turns ugly. That contributes to the movie’s meandering pace. Some of the conflict is organic and historic, while other overreactions seem contrived.

There are anachronisms beyond that Marines at Monte Cassino bit (automobile vanity plates didn’t turn up until the ’70s). And Quaid, delivering a little twinkle and an occasional “right side of history” zinger, has to work extra hard at not portraying the cliched “white savior” in all this, much as Kevin Costner strained against that “type” in “McFarland, U.S.A.”

But for all its shortcomings and self-seriousness, the cast and the story strike the right almost-light tone for this latest appeal to the “better angels of our nature.” A teen excursion “across the border” doesn’t go as planned, or according to audience expectations. And Nuñez plays his principal character as comically-clueless and comically “related” to everybody.

A light tone, just enough compelling back-stories and just-high-enough stakes make all the difference in the world between formulaic “plucky underdog” sports movies that work, and those that don’t.

Rating: PG, some violence, mild profanity, racial slurs, thematic material.

Cast: Jay Hernandez, Julian Works, Jaina Lee Ortiz, Brett Cullen,
Paulina Chávez, Miguel Angel Garcia, José Julián, Gregory Diaz IV, Christian Gallegos, Cheech Marin and Dennis Quaid.

Credits: Directed by Julio Quintana, scripted by Paco Farias, Jennifer Stetson and Julio Quintana, based on a book by Humberto G. Garcia. A Mucho Mas Media release.

Running time: 1:52