Fun football comedy

Rating: Null/10 (28 April 2004)

THE REPLACEMENTS (2000) *** Keanu Reeves, Gene Hackman, Brooke Langton, Jack Warden, Jon Favreau, Orlando Jones, Rhys Ifans, Michael Jace, Ace Yonamine, Michael `Bear' Taliferro, Faizon Love, David Denman, Troy Winbush, Gailard Sartain, (John Madden & Pat Summerall as themselves). (Dir: Howard Deutch) Sports comedies have always been a staple in the genre:
Baseball both professional (`Major League') and pee-wee (`The Bad News Bears'), ice hockey both professional (`Slap Shot') and pee-wee (`The Mighty Ducks') and the one sport that seems to stand apart, football, both professional (`The Longest Yard', `North Dallas Forty', `Necessary Roughness' and the climactic game in `M*A*S*H') and pee-wee (`Wildcats'). In the latest, familiar yet pleasantly amusing, neither are on display.
The eponymous characters are scab football players assembled in the wake of professional football players strike and centering on the fictitious team of The Washington Sentinels where its team owner (Warden) re-hires an old crony of his, Jimmy McGinty (erstwhile actor Hackman having a ball here), who assembles a ragtag assortment of athletic questionability under his own terms for the remaining four games of the regular season. McGinty recruits the rawest possible motley crew including a street-wise shop clerk/ running back (Jones of tv's `MAD TV'), a slightly demented cop/defensive tackle (Favreau in a ridiculously funny overkill with mad dog ferocity), a convicted felon/wide receiver (Jace), a deaf receiver (Denman), a sumo wrestler/noseguard (Yonamine), gangsta rapper bodyguards/defensive ends (Taliferro and Love) and Welsh soccer star/indebted gambling pub owner/kicker (Ifans, best known as Hugh Grant's scruffy roomie in `Notting Hill'). Heading the pack to glory is quarterback Shane Falco (Reeves), a former glory boy whose career to the big time was sidelined by a disastrous Sugar Bowl that everyone and his brother apparently saw witness to his debacle. Falco has the most to lose as McGinty takes him under his wing and providing a lot of pep talk to have his one token of good luck to enlist the unlikely team to victory. Also on hand is the head cheerleader Annabelle Farrell (Langton, a hot-looking newcomer who comes across nicely in her scenes with Reeves) that catches Falco's eye and heart and proves to be his biggest supporter and self-confidence booster. She has her hands full in auditioning her own assortment of misfits, largely exotic lap dancers showcasing their scandalous off-side and holding penalties of their own. The film is a pleasant surprise in such a hoary genre leading to The Big Game and the stock villain, this time the real football team on strike and causing trouble for the regular guys taking their places. But Reeves comes across as an amiable leader, often taking pause before going into action which is what all quarterbacks should have in spades : confidence and durability to get the job done. His teammates may lack in presentation but definitely have what Hackman calls `heart' that rings across the hi-jinks ensuing. Ifans steals the show as the chain-smoking (even on the field) place kicker Nigel Gruff and Jones has a stand-out scene incorporating Gloria Gaynor's girls-only (until now) anthem `I Will Survive' in a prison's holding cell after a bar brawl that becomes the team's signature. Written by Vince McKewin with great characters intermingling and some nice rock music choices by director Howard Deutch (including The Rolling Stones and Bachman Turner Overdrive to name two) for the bone-crunching high adrenalized game sequences, the comedy mirrors its protagonists dilemma: making you forget their predecessors by sitting back and enjoying the show.