This is one home team you won’t be rooting for!
The film, called “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl,” is a bit of a letdown. It’s not bad by any means, but it’s not great either. The story is basic and the characters are one-dimensional. The only thing that makes this movie worth watching is the art direction and the creative team that put it together. However, those are all things that can be improved upon.
The home team in this movie is not very good, despite a talented cast of young players. This is one movie that you won’t be rooting for when it comes to award ceremonies - not that it’s likely to be nominated for anything other than a Razzie.
The film is set in the small town of Happy Madison, Wisconsin, where a group of friends all play football for their local team. One day, the team’s quarterback (played by John Cusack) is drafted to play in the NFL and the townspeople start to worry about what will happen to them. The film follows his journey from being a high school student to playing in the NFL and back again.
In 2012, the New Orleans Saints were found guilty of violating the NFL’s policy on bounty payments and were fined $500,000. Head coach Sean Payton was also suspended for six games. This punishment came as a surprise to many because it seemed like their rough play in the 2010 Super Bowl victory might have been at fault.
In the movie, Payton’s story is told from the perspective of his son, who is a high school football coach in his hometown. The film follows Payton as he helps lead his team to championships and makes a name for himself as an underdog coach.
The true story of how one small town in upstate New York became the center of the world is probably more interesting than this. Happy Madison regular Kevin James stars as Payton, and he is joined by other faces familiar from Adam Sandler’s production studio, including Jackie Sandler as Beth, Payton’s ex-wife, and Rob Schneider as Beth’s hippyish new partner. Taylor Lautner is also in the movie as the coach in charge of the underdog football team, The Warriors. Of the young cast, most of the faces are unfamiliar, although fans of the recent The Mighty Ducks televisions series will recognize one of the kids.
This sports underdog movie is about a father-son relationship that is strained due to the father’s divorce and his coaching career. However, as the two finally get to spend more time together, the inevitable happens and they start to reconnect. In theory, their scenes together should be quite touching but as there is nothing in the script to really make us care for either of them, you are unlikely to shed a tear when they finally bond.
The Warriors are a bad team, but they’re not populated by the usual misfits that you’ll often find in a movie of this sort. Instead, they are just below-average players with very few character traits to make us warm to them. The young actors are fairly talented but as most of them are given very little to work with, they don’t make much of an impression.
The cast of the film is made up of mostly older actors who can be funny in the right situation. However, there are no jokes in this movie that are funny enough to make it worth watching. ..
This movie is a comedy, but it’s not really that funny. The true story behind it could have been a moving emotional drama, but instead we have another laugh-free comedy from Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions. This is on a par with the rest of the studio’s output, such as The Ridiculous 6, Jack and Jill, and Grown Ups.
There are some redeeming factors to the show. For one, Taylor Lautner does a good job in his underwritten role. He is better than many give him credit for, and he has had few opportunities in Hollywood to really shine. However, the scripts that he has been handed have mostly been terrible. He has had very few opportunities to really shine on television but the BBC comedy Cuckoo proved to the world (or to me at least) that he was actually a capable performer.
The underdog story of the Warriors is one that has been seen many times before in recent years. Payton’s expertise and the team’s growing confidence are what propel them up the leagues, but the humour and clichés used throughout take away from what could have been a more inspiring story. As it is, The Warriors is a half-baked comedy that falls short on more than one occasion. ..
