I am a big fan of sports films especially ones that are about football (of the American football variety.) When I this pop up on my screen of films I haven't watched yet on my Netflix home page I was surprised because I'm one of those guys that seeks out sports films but not only have I never seen this film, but I never even heard of it.
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The movie is about how the players in some American football league (they can't say NFL because they don't want to pay for the license to do so) are all on strike so the teams have to find other players in order to carry on with a season. Gene Hackman plays coach Jimmy McGinty, and he agrees to take on the Washington Sentinels to finish off the rest of the season. In order to do so he has to put together a team of people that are not already in the league.
It's supposed to be funny the people that he chooses to be a part of his team and some of it is, but most of it is just pretty dumb. I was even stoned when i watched this and didn't laugh very much because it was just slapstick garbage that focused heavily on showing how much of a killer and unstable player Danny Batemen (Jon Favreau before he got fat) is and how he goes completely berserk on the field despite being normal and reserved off the field.
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Keanu Reeves I guess is the main character and plays the role of Shane Falco who was a football star in college but after a bad bowl game decided to not pursue playing professionally. It is a completely absurd notion that because of one bad game someone would choose to not pursue a lucrative career in professional sports and instead live in a houseboat and work on yachts for the super wealthy. Absurd I tell you! So is the rest of this movie though.
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It is evident extremely early on exactly what is going to happen including the chance introduction of a love interest for Keanu. It's really bad folks and I think the only reason why I made it all the way through was because the edible I had was quite strong and me and the sofa became one autonomous unit that I was not going to leave for any reason.
Should I watch it?
I'm gonna say that you need to ignore the A-list roster in this thing and move on. There actually ARE a lot of great sports films on Netflix right now and I think you can basically pick any of them and it is going to be better than this. If it hadn't been for that "special cookie" i would have turned this off long before it was over. This isn't just one of the worst sports films I have seen in a while... it is one of the worst films I have endured to the end from any genre in a while.
