In 2025’s Stan The Man, Angus Benfield stars as Stan Jacobs, a football coach looking for redemption.
When we first meet Stan, he’s one of the most popular men in Texas. He’s a pro football coach, one who has been leading his team to victory after victory. One commentator states that Stan has put Texas “on the map.” He’s known as “Stan the Men” and everyone wants his autograph. What the public doesn’t know is that Stan is an alcoholic. After coaching while drunk (and even worse, losing the game), Stan is suspended from coaching. Because he can’t control his drinking, he soon finds himself in prison and then living on the streets. Eventually, Stan finds God, stop drinking, and gets the opportunity to coach a high school team. By an amazing coincidence, his star player just happens to have an alcoholic father who could use some counseling from someone who has been there….
It’s a nice storty and a well-intentioned film. That said, I am begging the directors of these low-budget, faith-based films to study how to tell a story and how to maintain narrative momentum. Stan The Man takes over a 100 minutes to tell an 80-minute story. Indeed, Stan isn’t even offered the high school coaching job until about 40 minutes into the movie. Before that, we have to sit through a lot of scenes that basically tell us the exact same thing over and over again: Stan is an alcoholic. Most of what happened during the first half of this film could have easily been compressed to just a handful of minutes. As it is, the movie just plays out too slowly.
And that’s a shame because there were some things that I definitely appreciated about this film. The film was set and shot in Texas and the scenery was lovely. Angus Benfield gave a good performance as Stan and most of the members of the supporting cast were believable in their roles. The film’s intentions were definitely good and I appreciated the emphasis that was put on forgiveness and second chances. Even at his worst and his most obnoxious, Stan is still clearly someone who, deep down, wants to change and fix his life. The film did not sugarcoat just how difficult it can be to grow up in the shadow of alcoholism. At the end of the film, I have to admit that I genuinely smiled when one of the characters introduced himself by sayin that he was a week sober. It was a genuinely sweet moment and, when he said those words, I remembered when my Dad was a week sober. And then a month sober. And then a year sober. And then several years sober. In that moment, the film definitely got to me.
If only the film wasn’t so slow. I think that directors sometimes think that good intentions are enough. But I would ask anyone who is making a movie to watch and truly study other films before they ever say, “Action!” for the first time. Stan The Man reaches a decent conclusion but it takes forever for it to really get started.
