Tag Archives: review

Film Review: Air (dir by Ben Affleck)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Air opens with a montage of the 80s.  Ronald Reagan is President.  MTV is actually playing music.  Wall Street is full of millionaires.  Sylvester Stallone is singing with Dolly Parton for some reason.  Because the specific year is 1984, people are nervously giving George Orwell’s book the side-eye.  Everyone wants an expensive car.  Everyone wants a big house.  Everyone wants the world to know how rich and successful and special they are.

What no one wants is a pair of Nike basketball shoes.  All of the major players are wearing Adidas and Converse while Nike is viewed as being primarily a company that makes running shoes.  CEO Phil Knight (played by Ben Affleck) is considering closing down the basketball shoe division.  Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), however, has a plan that he thinks will save the division.  Instead of recruiting three or four low-tier players to wear and endorse Nike shoes, Sonny wants to spend the entire division’s budget on just one player.  Sonny is convinced that a young Michael Jordan is destined to become one of the best players in the history of basketball and he wants to make a shoe that will be specifically designed for Jordan.

The problem is that Michael Jordan doesn’t want to have anything to do with Nike because Nike is not viewed as being a cool brand.  Jordan wants to sign with Adidas, though he’s considering other offers as well.  He also wants a new Mercedes.  Even though everyone tells Sonny that he’s wasting his time and that he’ll be responsible for a lot of people losing their jobs if he fails, Sonny travels to North Carolina to make his pitch personally to Jordan’s mother (Viola Davis).

For it’s first 50 minutes or so, Air feels like a typical guy film, albeit a well-directed and well-acted one.  Almost all of the characters are former jocks and the dialogue is full of the type of good-natured insults that one would expect to hear while listening to a bunch of longtime friends hanging out together.  For all the pressure that Sonny is under, the underlying message seems to be one of wish fulfilment.  “Isn’t it great,” the film seems to be saying, “that these guys get to hang out and talk about sports all day?”  When Sonny runs afoul Michael Jordan’s agent, David Falk (Chris Messina), one is reminded of the stories of temperamental film executives who spent all day yelling at each other on the telephone.  The efforts to sign Jordan feel a lot like the effort to get a major star to agree to do a movie and it’s easy to see what attracted Damon and Affleck to the material.  Even though the majority of the film takes place in the Nike corporate offices, it deals with a culture that Damon and Affleck undoubtedly know well.

But then Jason Bateman delivers a great monologue and the entire film starts to change.  Despite his reluctance to sign with Nike, Michael Jordan and his family have agreed to visit the corporate headquarters.  Sonny has a weekend to oversee the creation of the shoe that will hopefully convince Jordan to sign.  When Sonny shows up for work, he’s excited.  But then he has a conversation with Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), the head of marketing.  Strasser talks about his divorce and how he only sees his daughter on the weekends.  Every weekend, Rob brings his daughter the latest free Nike stuff.  His daughter now his 60 pairs of Nike shoes.  Rob admits that, even if he loses his job, he’ll probably still continue to buy Nike shoes because that’s now what his daughter expects whenever she sees him.  Rob compares Sonny’s plan to the Bruce Springsteen song Born in the USA, in that the tune sounds hopeful but the lyrics are much darker.  If the plan succeeds, Nike will make a lot of money.  If it fails, Rob and everyone in the basketball division will be out of a job and that’s going to effect every aspect of their lives.  Rob points out that Sonny made his decision to pursue only Michael Jordan without thinking about what could happen to everyone else.  Sonny says that success requires risk.  Rob replies that Sonny’s words are spoken, “like a man who doesn’t have a daughter.”

It’s an honest moment and it made all the more powerful by Bateman’s calm but weary delivery of the lines.  It’s the moment when the film’s stakes finally start to feel real, even though everyone knows how the story eventually turned out.  As well, it’s in this moment that the film acknowledges that the Air Jordan legacy is a complicated one.  Rob talks about how the shoes are manufactured in overseas sweatshops.  Later, when discussing whether or not Michael Jordan should get a percentage of the sales, Jordan’s mother acknowledges that the shoes aren’t going to be cheap to purchase.  They’re going to be a status symbol, just as surely as the Mercedes that Jordan expects for signing with the company.  Air becomes much like that Springsteen song.  On the surface, it’s a likable film about a major cultural moment, full of dialogue that is quippy and sharply delivered without ever falling into the pompous self-importance of one of Aaron Sorkin’s corporate daydreams.  But, under the surface, it’s a film about how one cultural moment changed things forever, in some ways for the better and in some ways for the worse.

It’s an intelligent film, one the creates a specific moment in time without ever falling victim to cheap nostalgia.  Matt Damon gets a brilliant monologue of his own, in which he discusses how America’s celebrity culture will always attempt to tear down anyone that it has previously built up.  Ben Affleck plays Nike’s CEO as being an enigmatic grump, alternatively supportive and annoyed with whole thing.  As for Michael Jordan, he is mostly present in only archival footage.  An actor named Damian Delano Young plays him when he and his parents visit Nike’s corporate headquarters but, significantly, his face is rarely show and we only hear him speak once.  In one of the film’s best moments, he shrugs his shoulders in boredom while watching a recruitment film that Nike has produced to entice him and, because it’s the first reaction he’s shown during the entire visit, the audience immediately understands the panic of every executive in the room.

Air is a surprisingly good film.  It’s currently streaming on Prime.

Retro Television Reviews: City Guys 4.22 “Dating Games” and 4.23 “Wager Money Go”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing City Guys, which ran on NBC from 1997 to 2001.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, Cassidy develops a crush on Chris while Jamal deals with a gambling problem!  Didn’t we already do all of this?

Episode 4.22 “Dating Games”

(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on December 9th, 2000)

It’s time for the Valentine’s Day dance!  Why did the Valentine’s Day episode air in December?

Cassidy is upset because she doesn’t have a boyfriend.  Dawn asks Cassidy why she doesn’t just hook up with Chris since they do things together all the time and Chris is totally in love with her.  In fact …. hey, remember last week when everyone got drunk and Cassidy announced on national television that she liked Chris?  I guess Cassidy doesn’t because she tells Dawn that she and Chris are just good friends.  “I need a boyfriend!” Cassidy announces.  Dawn tells Cassidy that she’s too much into image and what other people will think.  Cassidy doesn’t hear her because she’s too busy checking out Jordan, the hottest guy at the school.  Dawn says that Jordan only dates girls who are on the rebound so Cassidy decides that she needs to pretend to date someone and fake break up with them so that she can go out with the guy she really likes.

Paging Chris!

After pretending to date Chris and then staging their breakup, Cassidy hooks up with Jordan and Chris hooks up with a girl named Linda.  However, Cassidy realizes that she actually likes Chris more than Jordan so she breaks up with Jordan.  At the dance, Dawn tells Chris that Cassidy likes him so Chris heads over to Cassidy’s penthouse and finally — FINALLY! — the two of them declare their love for each other.  Awwwwww!

Despite a silly B-plot involving Ms. Noble teaching a meditation class and an A-plot that involved everyone being kind of stupid, this was actually a pretty good episode by City Guys standards.  Maybe I’m just a sucker for romance.  Chris and Cassidy are a cute couple.

Episode 4.23 “Wager Money Go”

(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on December 9th, 2000)

“Yo, Jamal,” Al says, “this gambling is making you whack!”

And indeed it is!  Jamal has developed a gambling problem.  He’s spending all of his time at a “backroom gambling joint,” where he plays craps while a local gangster watches.  Jamal swears to everyone that he has a system and he can’t lose.  However, he spends almost the entire episode losing.  It’s amazing that Jamal got addicted that quickly without actually being any good at the thing to which he got addicted.  After his friends get tired of him borrowing money from them, he steals it from the register at work.  Unfortunately, L-Train has just started working at the diner and he gets blamed for the missing money.  L-Train is out of a job and Jamal loses all of his friends.  Fortunately, Jamal comes clean, learns an important lesson, and that’s that.

While this is going on, Cassidy and Dawn make a documentary about Ms. Noble.  It turns out that Ms. Noble is kind of boring so Dawn and Cassidy try to create a crisis so they can get Ms. Noble doing something exciting on film.  There is a funny moment in which Ms. Noble refers to her husband as being “Bobby” before quickly correcting herself as saying, “I mean, Billy.”  I’m going to guess this was unscripted.  By the time this episode was shot, not even the cast could be bothered to remember the name of Ms. Noble’s husband.  Otherwise, this was yet another B-plot that revolved around how creepily obsesses all of the students were with Ms. Noble.

This was another one of those episodes where a well-established character, Jamail in this case, was required to start acting in a way that was totally out-of-character just so an important lesson could be learned.  It wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t particularly memorable either.  Do gambling joints, even illegal ones, regularly allow high school students in to play craps?  That would seem like more trouble than its worth.

Film Review: On a Wing and a Prayer (dir by Sean McNamara)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Having just attended the funeral of his brother, Doug White (Dennis Quaid) and his family — wife Terri (Heather Graham) and daughters Bailey (Abigail Rhine) and Maggie (Jessi Case) — are flying back to their home in Louisiana.  Unfortunately, shortly after takeoff, their pilot suffers a heart attack and dies.  Now Doug, who’s had only one flight lesson in his entire life, has to not only fly the plane but also land safely.

Doug has people on the ground, trying to talk him through the landing even though they don’t know what is actually happening in the cockpit.  Hard-drinking Dan Favio (Rocky Myers) calls his friend, Kari Sorenson (Jesse Metcalfe).  Kari has never gotten over the death of his family in a similar plane crash so, for him, helping Doug land is about more than just saving Doug and his family.  It’s also about achieving his own personal redemption and hopefully finding the strength to forgive himself.

While this is going on, two kids — Donna (Raina Grey) and Buggy (Trayce Malachi) — follow the flight online and then head down to the airport so that they can watch it try to land.  To be honest, I’m really not sure why either one of them is in the movie.  When Donna first showed up, talking about how she wanted to be a pilot because “Mr. Jones” told her that girls can’t fly planes, I found myself dreading the inevitable moment when the kids would take it upon themselves to help Doug land the plane.  I dreaded Donna calling the cockpit and Doug going, “Wait a minute …. you’re just a kid!”  Fortunately, that moment didn’t happen but I was still left wondering why Donna and Buggy were in the film to begin with.

It feels almost churlish to be overly critical of a film like On a Wing and a Prayer because it is based on a true story.  Doug White really did have to land an airplane after the pilot died mid-flight and he really was instructed on what to do by a group of air traffic controllers and Kari Sorenson.  It’s a good story and the film ends with some undeniably touching shots of the real people involved in the landing.  That said, this is ultimately a film that many filmgoers will want to like more than they actually do.  Thanks to some dodgy special effects, the viewer never forgets that Dennis Quaid and his family aren’t really tapped up in the sky.  Instead, one is always aware that they’re just watching a movie and a rather cheap-looking one at that.  As well, the script is full of awkward dialogue and heavy-handed moments.  As soon as I saw that one of the daughters wouldn’t stop looking at her phone, I knew that she would be the one who would be forced to grow up in a hurry.  As soon as the other daughter ate something with nuts in it, I knew that there was going to be a desperate search for an epi-pen.

On the plus side, Dennis Quaid was as likable as ever and Heather Graham managed to wring some genuine feeling out of even the most sentimental of dialogue.  On A Wing and a Prayer was directed by Sean McNamara, who also directed one of my favorite films of 2011, Soul Surfer.  (Later this year, McNamara and Quaid have another project that is scheduled to be released, a biopic of President Ronald Reagan.)  On A Wing and A Prayer doesn’t really work as a film but, as a story, it at least reminds us of what people are capable of doing when they all work together.

Retro Television Reviews: The Love Boat 2.13 “El Kid/The Last Hundred Bucks/Isosceles Triangle”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986!  The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

Welcome aboard!  Get ready for tonal whiplash on this week’s episode of The Love Boat!

Episode 2.13 “El Kid/The Last Hundred Bucks/Isosceles Triangle”

(Dir by Allen Baron, originally aired on December 9th, 1978)

Wes (David Madden) and Renee Larson (Dena Dietrich) are happy to be setting sail with their friend and business partner, April (Rue McClanahan).  They’re even more excited when the widowed April meets Van Milner (Dabney Coleman), a recently divorced businessman.  Not only is April falling in love with Van but it also appears that Van might even be willing to join the board of April’s hospital and invest some of his money into fixing the place up.  Except, of course, Van lost his job over a year ago and he really doesn’t have that much money left.  April is crestfallen to discover that Van is not the wealthy man that she believed him to be.  Was he just romancing her for her money?  When Van wins a few thousand dollars at the craps table, he donates the money to the hospital and April realizes that he was being honest about his feelings towards her.

This was a pretty predictable story and April was way too quick to forgive Van for his dishonesty but it was interesting to see an actor like Dabney Coleman, someone who brought a naturally cynical edge to any character that he played, on a show like The Love Boat.  As played by Coleman, Van seemed to be suffering from very real inner pain.  For once, the emotional drama on The Love Boat felt, if not quite real, then at least credible.

Speaking of pain, that’s what Larry (Robert Urich) and Cybill Hartman (Heather Menzies) had waiting for them when they took the Love Boat to Mexico so they could adopt a baby.  Upon arriving at the local orphanage, they were told that the mother of their baby had changed her mind and would not be giving up her baby after all.  Instead, Larry and Cybill left with 12 year-old Pepito (Gabriel Melgar), a little brat who steals Larry’s watch and sells it on the boat.  When Larry gets upset, Pepito grabs an inflatable lifeboat and prepares to jump overboard.  Fortunately, Larry and Cybill talk him out of it and he agrees to be their son and to stop stealing stuff.  This was an annoying story, largely because Pepito was so whiny.  It was hard not to feel that Larry and Cybill deserved better than having to raise Pepito.

Finally, Julie’s friend, Karen Maynard (Connie Stevens), boards the boat and both Captain Stubing and Doc Bricker spend the entire voyage pursuing her because it’s not like the Captain and the ship’s doctor would actually be expected do their job while the ship is floating in the middle of the ocean.  Gopher, Ike, and Julie take bets on who Karen will choose but, in the end, Karen chooses neither because both Doc and Stubing decide to respect the other’s feelings and stop pursuing Karen.  This whole storyline was silly because there was really no doubt about who Karen would have picked.  Seriously, anyone who is a passenger on a cruise is automatically going to fall for the captain because the captain is the most powerful person on the boat.  But, on the plus side, the storyline showed off the chemistry between all of the show’s regulars.  It was likable, even if it never quite felt plausible.

This was an episode about which I had mixed feelings.  The three storylines were so tonally dissimilar that they didn’t really seem that they all should have been happening on the same cruise.  Plus, Pepito was the most obnoxious orphan since the kids on One World.  I’m glad things worked out for Dabney Coleman, though.

Film Review: M3GAN (dir by Gerald Johnstone)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Gemma (Allison Williams) is a roboticist who works for America’s most successful Seattle-based toy company, Funki.  Funki is the company behind the Purrpetual Pets, the really annoying Furby rip-offs that every child wants to have.  Gemma has developed a child-sized humanoid robot that she calls M3GAN.  She thinks that it could be the new big toy but her boss, David (Ronny Chieng), disagrees.  David says to stick with what works and develop a new Purrpetual Pet.

While Gemma is trying not to lose her job, she also has to deal with a new arrival in her home.  Following the tragic deaths of her parents and the destruction of her Purrpetual Pet, Gemma’s eight year-old niece moves in with her.  From the minute that Cady (Violet McGraw) shows up, things are awkward.  Gemma is more comfortable dealing with technology than with other humans.  When Cady attempts to play with a toy on Gemma’s bookshelf, Gemma quickly explains that it’s not a toy.  “It’s a collectible.”  In fact, it’s not until Gemma introduces Cady to M3GAN (played by Amie Donald with Jenna Davis providing her voice) that Cady finally starts to become comfortable in her new home.  M3GAN is the friend, older sister, and maternal figure that Cady is desperately looking for.  And even though Gemma knows that M3GAN is still being developed and could possibly malfunction, Gemma is kind of happy that Cady finally has someone other than Gemma to look after her.

And, of course, M3Gan is happy too.  M3GAN proves to not only be a quick learner but she also takes her duty to look after Cady very seriously.  When the neighbor’s dog bites Cady, the dog vanishes shortly afterward.  When the neighbor suggests that either Cady or Gemma had something to do with the dog’s disappearance, the neighbor ends up getting attacked in her garage.  When a bully tries to push Cady around before then attacking M3GAN, M3GAN reacts by ripping off his ear.  It may seem like it’s good to have M3GAN on your side but what about when M3GAN decides that Gemma isn’t doing a good enough job raising Cady?  What about when M3GAN herself starts to suspect that Cady needs to be disciplined?

M3GAN came out in January and it was, to the surprise of many, the first big critical and commercial success of 2023.  Some of that, of course, is because there really wasn’t much competition back in January.  Audiences that didn’t want to rewatch the Avatar or Black Panther sequels really didn’t have many other options other than M3GAN and Plane.

That said, M3GAN is an undeniably effective mix of satire and horror.  It works precisely because it captures what we all secretly fear, that AI is eventually going to kill us.  M3GAN may look adorable and she gets to show off some pretty good dance moves towards the end of the film but she’ll kill anyone who gets on her nerves and, as both Gemma and Cady find out, it’s pretty much impossible to turn her off.  It’s not just that M3GAN replaces Gemma as Cady’s primary caregiver.  It’s that the viewer knows that it’s totally possible that there’s an army of M3GANs out there, waiting to replace all of us.  At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the future, at least 50% of the reviewers over on Rotten Tomatoes will actually be advanced AIs, programmed to overpraise studio productions while only giving negative reviews to films that don’t necessarily need good reviews to sell tickets.

M3GAN works as both a satire and a horror flick.  The movie opens with a macabre  Purrpetual Pet commercial that’s cringey specifically because it feels so accurate.  As brought to life by Amie Donald and Jenna Davis, M3GAN is a wonderfully creepy character who is occasionally made sympathetic by the fact that, much like HAL in 2001 and the robots in Creation of the Humanoids, M3GAN seems to have more genuine feelings than the humans around her.  Indeed, with the exception of Violet McGraw’s Cady, there are no sympathetic human characters.  Gemma, for instance, is a very familiar type, someone who knows how to write code but who has no idea how to relate to anyone on an actual emotional level.  In many ways, her relationship with Cady is just as a manipulative and destructive as M3GAN’s.

M3GAN is a strong movie up until the final 20 minutes, when M3GAN suddenly starts to target people who she really doesn’t have any reason to go after.  But, overall, it’s an effective look at the future that we may have waiting for us.

Music Video of the Day: Ain’t No Sunshine, covered by DMX (2001, dir by Hype Williams)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This song and most of the footage in this video was taken from a Steven Seagal movie.  Exit Wounds was apparently Seagal’s last big studio film.  Both the song and the video make Seagal look cooler than he’s ever looked in any of his films but obviously, a lot of that is due to the power of DMX’s vocals.  DMX could make anything seem powerful.

Enjoy!

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 2.21 “Yesterday’s Love/Fountain of Youth”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1986.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

Smiles, everyone, smiles!  It’s time to take a trip to Fantasy Island!

Episode 2.21 “Yesterday’s Love/Fountain of Youth”

(Dir by George McCowan, originally aired on March 17th, 1979)

Tattoo has the hiccups so Mr. Roarke pops a brown paper bag beside his head and scares the Hell out of him. Tattoo loses his hiccups and Roarke get the joy of tormenting his assistant.

As for the fantasies, they both involve youth and aging.

Charles (Craig Stevens) and Peggy Atwood (Eleanor Parker) met in 1944, when he was in the Navy and she was a member of the USO.  Now, over thirty-years later, Charles wants to open a bait shop and Peggy wants to get a divorce.  Their children pay for Charles and Peggy to take a trip to Fantasy Island, where Mr. Roarke has recreated the period in which they first met.  He’s also invited all of their old friends to come celebrate Peggy and Charles’s anniversary.  Unfortunately, one of those friends is the totally arrogant Brick Howard (Guy Madison), to whom Peggy was engaged before meeting Charles.  It quickly becomes apparent that Brick wants a second chance and that, unlike Charles, Brick has bigger plans than spending his retirement selling fishing bait.

Will Peggy leave her husband for Brick Howard?  Or will she decide that running a bait shop sounds like a great way to spend her twilight years?  You’ll have to watch the show to find out …. or you can read the next paragraph.

Of course, Peggy stays with Charles!  It wouldn’t be Fantasy Island if the ending wasn’t a happy one.  Add to that, when has anyone named Brick Howard not turned out to be a cad?  As you can guess, this fantasy was a bit predictable but the cast of veteran actors were all likable and they gave it their all.  This fantasy was simple but pleasant.

As for the other fantasy, world-famous explorer Jeff Bailey (Dennis Cole) needs money so Mr. Roarke arranges for him to be hired by aging millionaire J.J. Pettigrew (Lew Ayres).  J.J. has heard rumors that the fabled Fountain of Youth can be found on an island near Fantasy Island.  He offers to pay Bailey a million dollars if he can find it.  Of course, Bailey does find the Fountain but he also discovers that the Fountain is guarded by a fierce tribe of headhunters.  The headhunters have no intention of allowing anyone else to have any of the water’s fountain.  The headhunters may be intimidating but they also believe that a polaroid camera can steal their soul.  Bailey threatens to take all of their pictures at one point and tells them that J.J. possesses “white man magic.”  Seen today, it’s a bit awkward to watch.  To be honest, I imagine it was a bit awkward in 1979 as well.

Using his canteen, Bailey steals some of the water from the fountain but, while he and his girlfriend (Mary Louise Weller) are fleeing the natives, he loses the canteen.  J.J. has a heart attack and appears to be dead but, at the end of the episode, Roarke announces that J.J. is expected to survive and he’s written Bailey a check for a million dollars.  Bailey found the fountain and that was their agreement.  So, I guess that all worked out.

Overall, this episode was uneven.  The anniversary story was sweet but predictable.  The headhunter story was sometimes cingey but still enjoyably campy.  This was pretty much a standard episode of Fantasy Island.  Still, I can’t help but wonder why J.J. didn’t just buy an eternal youth fantasy instead of hiring Bailey to search for the fountain.  I guess that question is destined to be forever unanswered.

Next week’s episode is all about comedians and prisoners!

 

Film Review: Champions (dir by Bobby Farrelly)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In Champions, Woody Harrelson plays Marcus Marakovich.

Marcus is a basketball coach.  He believes that he has the talent and the ability to be a coach in the NBA and he’ll tell that to anyone who will listen.  Unfortunately, Marcus also has a reputation for being self-destructive and temperamental.  He has sabotaged his career with too many public fights.  As his friend and fellow coach Phil (Ernie Hudson) tells him, Marcus knows everything about basketball but he doesn’t know how to connect with the players.  Marcus is so concerned with winning that he never gets to know the people that are playing for him.

Of course, Marcus has more problems than just his inability to connect with players.  An on-court brawl leads to Marcus losing his assistant coaching job.  A drunk driving incident leads to Marcus landing in jail.  Phil bails him out but Marcus will still have to do community service to avoid serving time.  Marcus is assigned to spend the next 90 days coaching The Friends, a basketball team made up of players who have learning disabilities.  Though at first reluctant, Marcus doesn’t want to go to prison and, after a rough start, he and the Friends start to bond.  Marcus becomes a better coach and the Friends become a better team and soon, it looks like they might even be playing in the North American Special Olympics Finals in Winnipeg.  Along the way, Marcus also falls for Alex (Kaitlin Olson), the sister of one of his players.

Champions is a heartfelt film that suffers from the fact that there’s really not a single surprising moment to be found within it.  As soon as Woody Harrelson shows up as a hard-drinking and cynical basketball coach who is looking for one more chance to make it to the NBA, most members of the audience will know exactly what to expect.  It’s not a shock that he eventually bonds with his players.  It’s not a shock that he falls in love with Alex nor that he eventually calls Alex out for using her brother’s needs as an excuse to not get close to anyone.  It’s not even a surprise when Cheech Marin shows up as the cheerful manager of the rec center where the Friends practice.  And it’s certainly not a surprise that Marcus’s work with the Friends leads to him getting an offer from an NBA team, an offer that might not be as altruistic as Marcus wants to believe.  (The team is mired in a scandal and feels that hiring Marcus would bring them some good publicity.)  Marcus is faced with a big decision and the choice that he makes won’t surprise anyone.  At one point, Marcus specifically mentions the film Hoosiers, as if the simple act of acknowledging the fact that Champions isn’t exactly breaking new ground will somehow make up for the film’s predictability.

That doesn’t mean that Champions isn’t a likable film, of course.  It’s a crowd pleaser.  The actors playing the Friends actually are all learning disabled and the film portrays them all as individuals with their own unique personalities and abilities.  It’s hard not to get excited for them when they succeed on the court and the film refuses to use any of their disabilities for cheap laughs.  The film’s heart is in the right place and there’s always something to be said for that.  But, as I watched Champions, I became very much aware that this was a film that I wanted to like more than I actually did.  It was hard for me not to compare Woody Harrelson’s well-meaning but self-destructive coach to the similar character than Ben Affleck played in The Way Back.  The Way Back worked because it took a familiar character type but then allowed that character and the story to go in an unexpected direction.  Watching Champions, it was hard for me to not wish that the film had been willing to take a few more risks.