Entertaining

Rating: 8/10 (12 August 2000)

I've seen a few football movies over the years and most of them don't really entertain me that much. The last one was `Any Given Sunday' and that one turned out to annoy me more than entertain me. `The Replacements' I liked.
The story is simple. Professional football players go on strike and the team brings in replacement players to finish the season. That's it. There's no subplot or tricky twists that try to make the movie more than it's out to be. Mind you the replacement players turn out to be either misfits or just guys who never made it to the pros but then, that's the charm of the movie.
The movie focuses on the characters and the situation they're placed in but it's not entirely testosterone filled (although there's quite a bit of it). There's humor laced throughout that I really enjoyed and it wasn't a two hour movie filled with swears every second word. In fact, I don't even recall hearing any now that I think about it.
Keanu Reeves plays the replacement quarter back and it seems that as he gets older his acting becomes better. I still occasionally find it hard to not associate him with `Bill and Ted' but I do respect the fact that he's always gone after different roles. I've rarely seen Gene Hackman give a poor performance and he doesn't disappoint in this movie. He's done a few other `coach' type roles so this shouldn't be anything difficult. There were a couple peripheral actors that really did grab the spotlight when they had it. Rhys Ifans plays the Welsh kicker and he definitely draws a lot of laughs. I first saw him in `Nottinghill' as `Spike' and he definitely is one of the character actors that's hard not to like. Orlando Jones plays Franklin and plays him well. He's very hard to ignore when he's on screen.

Overall, I liked this movie and would recommend it to anyone wanting a good laugh but don't come to me and say that it was predictablewhat else were you expecting from a football movie?