Home Team
Questions:
- Is it really that bad? The plot – for me – seems kind of ok, if a bit hackneyed. It feels a little like the character-rebuilding stuff that Ivan Reitman did with Howard Stern’s “Private Parts.”
- Like, how much of this thing is true story and how much is straight-up fabricated, you think? I wonder if Payton just sat around all the time and started drinking beers at noon, because that’s likely what I would do with a year off.
- Do you think Sean Payton got pissed that Kevin James was playing him? Payton was an ok looking dude, but part of James’s schtick is that he’s an oofish, big goof. Usually when real-life people are played onscreen, they end up with an upgrade – like that fishing boat captain in “A Perfect Storm” who sooooo did not look like George Clooney.
- Do you think your love of Football had any bearing on your enjoyment of the movie either way?
- How’s Adam’s Sandler’s wife as an actress? Is she any good, or is this Sheri Moon-Zombie territory?
- Is a good/bad Kevin James movie better than a bad Adam Sandler movie? Who is worse, and is the real measure how much Rob Schneider or David Spade is included?
- What the Hell happened to Taylor Launtner’s career? Pattinson? The Batman. The Lighthouse. Tenet. Kristen Stewart? Crimes of the Future. Spencer. Personal Shopper. Lautner? Apparently he didn’t even reprise his role as Sharkboy in “We Could be Heroes”.
Bottom Five Teams
Beetlejuice (1988)
Dir. Tim Burton – The bus load of dead high school football players
I adore this movie – I think it’s one of Burton’s all-time best tied with Edward Scissorhands for that honor. But as fun as it is despite the darkness of its subject matter – I mean, the very likable lead characters, played by astonishingly young Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, die in the first ten minutes and then spend the remainder of the movie trying to learn to how to be ghosts – the movie does put its foot in a slightly icky space when it attempts to mine comedy from a collection of newly dead teenage football players. The team is unnamed, but the similarities to the 1970 tragedy of the Huntington, West Virginia Marshall University Football team who died in a plane accident are close enough for the gag to fall flat. Argue all you want that the football players were high school age not college-age in Beetlejuice and in a bus accident, not a plane accident, it feels like a insensitive misstep for throwaway gags involving the bureaucratic paper-pusher, Juno, who keeps getting called “coach” by the confused newly dead team members. And to their credit, Burton and screenwriters Michael McDowell, Larry Wilson and Warren Skaaren bring back the team for a sunny conga-line denouement that paints the afterlife as not-so-bad, but personally, for a movie that does so much right, the football team subplot feels pretty wrong.
The Replacements (2000)
Dir. Howard Deutch – The “Real” Washington Sentinels –
I’ve spoken about this movie before, so I will keep this brief, but the original Washington Sentinels, who are a bunch of cry-baby millionaires fronted by chief jackass quarterback Eddie Martel, played with all the smarminess ever by Brett Cullen. Martel and his crew do little more than antagonize others as a team and set an incredibly low bar for cinematic sports teams as the only thing they seem to excel at is flipping Keanu Reeves’s already beaten up truck onto its side. And if you think about it, how good a team could these a-holes have really been? Replaced by a disgraced college QB, a convict, two bodyguards, a sumo wrestler, a preacher, an insane cop and a gambling-addicted “wiry” ex-soccer player? They had to have been awful for these dudes to have done better!
The Monster Squad (1987)
Dir. Fred Dekker – Classic Monsters
A fun 80’s movie probably best known for the line “The Wolfman has nards!” this “Goonies-meets-the-Universal-Monsters” is well-loved by most that remember it. But truth be told, as a team, the Universal Monsters, which include Dracula, The Wolfman, The Mummy, Gill-man (The Creature from the Black Lagoon) and, initially before he defects, Frankenstein’s Monster, make a pretty lousy team. It could be Dracula’s leadership – he’s pretty much an insecure dictator who doesn’t consider the needs or opinions of his fellow monsters – but we’re talking ICONS OF HORROR here and they can’t even get it together to take over a town protected by a bunch of truly obnoxious, snot-nosed kids? Seriously? I suppose the movie’s for kids – although some of the themes and humor aims more n the direction of immature adults – and thus the protagonists have to be children and HAVE to win. But man, do I ever want a version of this story with these creatures being allowed to really do their scary business and be their best selves. Because in “The Monster Squad” writer/director Fred Dekker – best known for his wild “Night of the Creeps” – and Shane Black, a frequent collaborator and write of the “Lethal Weapon” movies – give us kiddie versions that are far more inept than they are terrifying. And together they prove to be more buffoons with nards than monters with balls.
Aliens (1986)
Dir. James Cameron – The Colonial Marines
While “Aliens” is arguably one of the greatest sci-fi/horror/action movies of all time – and also one of the very rare sequels that is as good as its predecessor – it all hangs a bit on the pure ineptitude of the band of allegedly tough-as-nails marines who accompany Ripley to a new planet overrun by nasty xenomorphs. Cocky, brash, crass and seemingly more into posturing than actually carrying out a military operation to search and rescue civilian colonists, most of these jarheads are made mincemeat of in their first encounter with the titular aliens. Granted, the plot uses these tough guys and gals to make a point of just how absurdly deadly the xenomorphs are – and how much more scary an army of them are than the single one from the first movie. Point made, for sure, but upon re-watch, this group doesn’t come off so much as a crack team of professionals as they do a bunch of well-armed fools who gab and flex way more than they do, you know, fight and survive. By the end, all of their chest-puffing and bravado is proven to be a lot of hot air, with only one out of the original ten surviving, albeit he is very injured, to the end credits. Seriously, how good a team could they have been if a civilian, half an android and a little kid outlived them?
Justice League (2017/2021)
Dir. Joss Whedon/Zack Snyder- The DC Superheroes
I don’t care which version anyone prefers, although I find Whedon’s brighter, lighter and funnier version infinitely more tolerable than Snyder’s joyless, overlong and excessive slog, this movie – these movies? – straight up destroy the much-loved superheroes that make up the core of the DC universe. Admission time: I am more a DC guy than Marvel, at least when it comes to the comics and the characters. I get that Marvel’s are allegedly more human and thus relatable, but with the exception of Spider-man and maybe Captain America, few were considered as iconic as Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman before Marvel became a cinematic juggernaut with its cinematic universe. So, when DC entrusted cinematic cartoonist Zack Snyder, of 300, Watchmen and Sucker Punch, to attempt to do what Marvel was doing, it was decided that iconography and edginess would be the earmarks of the franchise and that the characters would almost completely be robbed of their joy. Batman, already almost too dark after Christopher Nolan’s treatment of the character, became laughable in his beefy Ben Affleck form and Henry Caville, while looking the part, seemed way, wayyyy too serious as Superman who committed the cardinal sin of KILLING someone in his first cinematic outing. Their first team-up, the absolutely abyssmal Batman Vs. Superman, the heroes were reduced to growling, brawling idiots who, for one moment, were given a lighthearted moment when Wonder Woman made her appearance and proceeded to destroy all ass. Wonder Woman would do well in her first solo feature, the fun, spirited 2017 flick that benefitted less from Gal Gadot and than it did director Patty jenkins and a fantastically likeable Chris Pine, but oh my God, then Justice League happened and the central two heroes Batman and Wonder Woman – Superman spent a lot of the movie dead – were joined by DOA versions of Aquaman, Flash and… ugh… Cyborg. Look, I know there’s a lot of controversy over how Ray Fisher was treated by Joss Whedon, but oh my God, give me the Teen Titans Go! version of Cyborg ANY DAY OF THE WEEK over Fisher’s moody, mopey, emo Cyborg. These were basically five mediocre tastes (at best) that taste HORRIBLE when smashed together in a “save the world” plot against this foolishly dopey villain called Steppenwolf who looks like a crap draft of Tim Curry’s Darkness character from Ridley Scott’s movie “Legend.” Yeah, all the Justice League heroes look the part well enough, but they have very little chemistry – the KEY component to Marvel’s success. And with a boring “origin” story of getting the band together, it all falls flat, ruining what should have been a good time at the movies seeing iconic heroes in the flesh.
Kick Two Pick Two – Tom Hanks Edition Part 1!
Big
Toy Story
The Burbs
Saving Private Ryan