There is a recurring scene in The Replacements where the striking group of football players – they seem to move around en masse to run into the new guys – taunt the Replacements, the ring-ins, the ‘scabs’ for taking their jobs. It would have been more apt to have a group of competent actors, scriptwriters and directors hovering on the side of the screen, screaming accusations of laziness and ineptitude at everyone in the film.
Such excrutiating torture shouldn’t take this long. During the 120 excruciating Major League ripping minutes, we get multiple sequences highlighting just how unlikely this all is. All of them forming a mass grave into which your hopes and dreams will tumble.
It starts with the basic plot; when an NFL squad strikes due to poor pay midseason, the coach for hire Jimmy McGinty (Gene Hackman) decides to avoid the usual suspects and hire an… Unusual group of disparate individuals, with the aim of holding the fort until the playoffs.
So we get washed up has beens, sumo wrestlers, military head cases (Jon Favreau hang your head) and of course a smoking, drinking, swearing gambling Welshman. And because this Major League clone needed to be dumber and more Police Academy, the cheerleaders are on strike too, and have been replaced by strippers.
By my calculations Will Ferrell missed being in this by two or three years.
Keanu Reeves is expected to polish up this turd. As a former high profile college quarterback with a spectacular flameout that ended his career, he spends more time chatting up cheerleaders and dancing to 70s disco (don’t ask) than throwing a ball. In Hardball he was a bitty-ball coach who never seemed to do any coaching, here he is a quarterback for around twelve plays lasting maybe five minutes. He spends almost as much time dancing foolishly.
I Will Survive indeed. You may find yourself intoning those words as this progresses. You’ll need to distract yourself with something. The cast might appear as amateurs, but this is laziness at a professional level.
Final Rating – 4 / 10. You’ll wish it was the filmmakers that were on strike. Actually it sure appears that they are on the evidence here.
