an unwatchable abortion (rate it one star)

Rating: Null/10 (8 May 2006)

ON ANY GIVEN Sunday is plagued by its unrelenting disconnection from the reality of professional football. Every character is a cliché and congenitally stupid.
Al Pacino is the head coach, only he never coaches! He never seems to work at his job. He produces no game plans. He fails to instruct (in a meaningful way) any player. All he does is rant. He is like Othello on methamphetamine. He argues, he screams, he drinks, he pushes people around, he sermonizes to the team (in embarrassing monologues that no head coach would use), and he wallows in his maudlin subjectivity. Cameron Diaz is the caustic owner of the team. Her mouth is contorted in a perpetual PMS snarl. She seems to live for one thing: hysterical confrontation. She confronts Pacino and they scream and yell at each other constantly. She has some Oedipal problems  making comparisons with her father, who owned and managed the team to previous glory. She has the depth of a toothpick. Then we get James Woods. He is well, he is James Woods reduced to playing his version of the team doctor, and totally predictably.
Dennis Quaid is the aging quarterback. He's screwed up from injuries and too much pain medication and he is okay. Quaid does a decent job acting (light years ahead of others in this film). His wife, however, is the bitch from hell. Who invented her? Jesus, she makes about as much sense as a hamster screwing a basketball. She is upset at Quaid because he wants to retire. Now catch this  she actually slugs him in the jaw about it. So here is Quaid, 38 years of age with two MPV awards under his belt, and he wants to retire. The guy lives in a mansion and has a gazillion dollars under his belt, and his wife goes ape about his retiring. What quarterback ever had a wife like that? Then there is Jamie Fox. He is the upcoming quarterback with a chip on his shoulder and a lot of talent (except he can be a screw up too). He is stuck in the civil rights era. He sermonizes about getting the short end of the stick as a black quarterback. He loves rap music. He is out of control half the time, except he has a sweet girlfriend who stabilizes him (sort of). This is the type of character you invent when you are in tenth grade and dreaming of making a Hollywood movie. He and Pacino spend their time screaming at each other and failing to communicate.
Just take a real coach  say Joe Gibbs. Do you think Gibbs sits around and does no work, drinks himself into stupors, spends his time screaming about nothing, and cannot communicate with his problem players? Do you think a quarterback like Fox does would last one series of plays under a real coach? As for owners of million dollar football franchises (Jerry Jones)  are they idiot hysterics who spend their time spouting nonsense? The other football players are a bunch of stupid animals. They are busy snorting cocaine, swearing, screwing the next white woman, fighting with each other, Jim Brown is one of Pacino's assistant coaches. He too never does any coaching, just thundering yelling. The one sort of interesting player is Lawrence Taylor. Taylor is an ex football player and one of the true greats of the game. It seems he can act too. He is given a decent role that makes a little sense, and he is okay at it.
Real football players at this level are not just animals, and they are definitely not stupid. The playbooks in professional football can tax a math professor's ability to understand. There is actually a lot of intelligence in professional football. There are also a thousand stories Stone could have tapped into and made a good movie. I mean, if he wanted to concentrate on the problem player, then he could have used the Dwayne Thomas story from the Cowboys Super Bowl team. This was a guy that coach Landry found a way to use when he was the most aggravating player in football.
ON ANY GIVEN Sunday starts off with a quote from Vince Lombardi. Stone could have used two incidents from Lombardi's life to illustrate great coaching. When Lombardi coached the Washington Redskins he had a rookie running back named Larry Brown. Brown was not particularly fast or big, but Lombardi spotted something in him that made him think he could be the Redskins main man running the ball. Only there was one problem: Brown fumbled the ball a lot. Lombardi made Brown carry a football with him everywhere (and I mean everywhere) for two solid weeks. Brown went on to have a great career and was incredibly sure-handed with the football. When Lombardi came to training camp, a player was loafing through the drills. One of Lombardi's coaches wanted to chew him out. The player was Jerry Smith, an undersized tight end with about seven years with the Redskins. Lombardi told his coach to leave the guy alone, saying "That's Jerry Smith! The man can catch a football." Smith went on to have another seven years with the Skins and went down as one of the finest catching tight ends in the history of the game.
Stone also punctuates this movie with relentless visual overkill and with the soundtrack. Both are enough to wreck the nervous system of the average viewer. It is not just that these elements are so graphic and loud; it is that there is no pacing in the use of them. Stone turns them up as much as he can and never stops.
In conclusion, ON ANY GIVEN Sunday is a terrible movie. The acting sucks, the script is enough to embarrass Ed Wood, the visuals and soundtrack are a nightmare. It is just irredeemable crap.