San
Francisco Examiner - Friday, August 11th, 2000
"Replacements'
fumbles
By Wesley Morris EXAMINER FILM CRITIC
Football-strike comedy an offense without a defense
THE FEAR of being tagged stupid has gone to Keanu Reeves' head. "The Replacements" has him playing the smartest guy in the locker room - and the distinction is the only nuance in the film. The way-mellow one has surrounded himself with the dumbest people ever assembled for a sports movie. Reeves plays quarterback to the police-lineup of stereotypes and grotesques who've been hired to play football in the midst of a midseason players' walkout.
Typically, he's saddled with little to say, so that when he does dare speak, his words pass for Zen nuggets. Though the script fails to come up with anything for Reeves to say as brilliant as "Ex-cellent!" or "Whoooa. . .," his curt QB wisdom is like frat-house haiku. Here's one from the huddle during the big game: "Pain heals. Chicks dig scars.
Glory." Hai, sensei.
What drove a post-"Matrix" Reeves into the arms of "The Replacements" is none of our business. But judging from the way that baseball cap is pulled down over his face during the jailhouse electric-slide sequence, suggesting a dance double, he can't be happy about it.
His every pout is a plea with us for commiseration. Even the busty, wholesome cheerleader (Brooke Langton), who's been put on love-interest duty, is zipless. Bully for the writhing strippers who've been recruited as scabs for the striking cheerleaders; it's the only move that gets busted properly during the entire affair. Is this the satire the film's been after? It should have tried harder.
Writer Vince McKewin's muse seems to have been other bad sports films and his favorite beer ads. There are no signs of having lived or loved or even scored a satisfying victory at tiddlywinks, let alone tackle football. An angle on the tragi-comedy that is the NFL surfaces only as an endurance contest: How many times you can listen to "Taking Care of Business" or Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part 2" without climbing the walls? How do you respect a film whose idea of Jock Jam is "I Will Survive"? The film should simply be thrown to "Sports Center" anchor Stuart Scott and Rich Eisen and left for the carcass it is.
Instead, scads of familiar faces milk their greatest hit for a canned laugh: Orlando Jones (the "7-Up Yours" pitchman), rabid Jon Favreau (doing his most devastating Jeremy Piven) and Rhys Ifans (the grimy, gangly pig of "Notting Hill"). There's also a deaf fellow, a born-again Christian, a sumo-size Japanese guy and some gangsters tossed in for desperate measure. And as long as director Howard Deutch indulges them, the film is like two hours of outtakes in search of a studio audience.
The
camera has no idea what to look at, and the editing is supremely patchy.
In the way of wisdom, the film has Gene Hackman as the scab-team's coach
- although he's here sandwiched between Reeves and crusty team owner Jack
Warden: how wise could he be? Not even the big QB-cheerleader love-touchdown
makes an impact.
While
Reeves and Langton look deep through each other, Deutch makes The Police's
"Every Breath You Take" do all the heavy-lifting, cross-cutting a kiss
with game footage of John Madden and Pat Summerall going nuts about Reeves
taking the ball into the end zone. You want to take the whole thing out
to the parking lot and shoot it.
"The
Replacements" is vaguely based on the '87 players' strike but is being
touted as a football tribute to the underdog baseball comedy "Major League,"
which, as role models go, is highly suspect. But even in its extreme dimness,
that film glimpsed a pro-sport satire. "The Replacements" thinks comedy
and liquidating racial tension is achieved by line-dancing to "I Will Survive,"
a song performed only in movies standing in the welfare
lines.
Keanu seems to have left the dancing and the running and the throwing and
the acting to his stunt man, getting top dollar for mercifully minimal
output, conserving himself for "The Matrix" sequels. OK, maybe he is the
smartest guy in the locker room.
***
--
THEATERS Metreon, AMC 1000, Cinema 21, Stonestown, Alexandria, Century
Plaza (South San
Francisco)
--
EVALUATION 1/2 *
New
York Post Online - Friday, August 11th, 2000
Gridion
Goofiness
by JONATHAN FOREMAN
Formulaic but surprisingly charming and enjoyable football romp about a team of misfits given a chance at glory by an NFL strike. Running time: 109 minutes. Rated PG-13. At the Loews 42nd Street, the 86th Street East, the Battery Park City, others.
FOR all its pleasures, "The Replacements" won't replace "North Dallas Forty" "Semi-Tough" or even "The Longest Yard" in the canon of classic football movies.But despite a slow start, a shamelessly formulaic plot and what looks like some heavy-handed last-minute editing (here and there, you see the beginnings and endings of vanished subplots), it manages to be great fun - indeed, one of the most enjoyable entertainments of the summer.
It achieves this by recycling and binding into a genial and effective whole tried and true elements from "Slap Shot," "The Bad News Bears," "Longest Yard" and various other successful sports films and inserting them into a story line inspired by the 1987 NFL strike.
Even
the pounding sound track is such a compilation of popular "jock jams" that
there are times when the movie feels like a long music video. Still, although
every sports cliché you've ever seen is here (especially "heart"
triumphing
over talent), it somehow doesn't matter: You end up cheering for Keanu
Reeves and his motley crew of scab players.
With the playoffs approaching, the Washington Sentinels have just gone on strike. So owner Ed O'Neil calls in Jimmy McGinty (Gene Hackman), a coach he once fired, to recruit a team of amateurs, has-beens and coulda-beens happy to cross a picket line.
McGinty has an amazing memory for once-promising high school and college players, and quickly assembles a wacky, multicultural group, including Bateman (Jon Favreau), a dumb super-aggressive cop, and Wilkinson (Michael Jace), a hardened criminal allowed out of the penitentiary just to play football.
There's also a sumo wrestler (Ace Yonamine), a lightning-fast but cowardly and butterfingered ghetto thief (Orlando Jones), a talented but stone-deaf wide receiver (David Denman) and gun-toting twins who work as music industry bodyguards (Michael Taliferro and Faizon Love).
But the team's stars are Reeve's quarterback, Shane Falco (where do moviemakers get these names?) and chain-smoking soccer player turned kicker Nigel "The Leg" Gruff, ("Notting Hill's" Rhys Ifans).
There seems to be a cheerleaders' strike, too, because Annabelle, the head of the squad (Brooke Langton), is forced to recruit a bunch of sexy stripper/hookers to do the job.
Can Reeves unite the team and control his own tendency to choke at key moments? Will he persuade the lovely Annabelle to break a self-imposed ban on dating players? Will the replacement Sentinels be able to withstand the harassment of the horrible, arrogant regular players? (Of course, unlike those greedy millionaire players, the billionaire owners are just in it for the game ...)
Reeves is as stolid and likable as ever. Hackman, as always, brings an amazing amount of class and conviction to a skimpily written role. And Langton (TV's "Melrose Place" and "The Net") is so natural and appealing as Annabelle that she's a sure bet for future female leads on the big screen.
The football scenes are choreographed and directed by Allan Graf, the master who made the game look so exciting in "Any Given Sunday" and "Jerry Maguire."
The
only thing in the film that leaves a slightly sour taste in your mouth
- especially with Hollywood unions
considering
a strike next summer - is the way it glorifies scabs and unabashedly takes
the side of management,
painting
pro-football players as overpaid and spoiled brats who during the strike
"return to their castles and
private
jets."
It
conveniently ignores the fact that most players aren't millionaire superstars,
and are finished and semi-crippled by 40.
NY
Daily News - Friday, August 11th, 2000
'Replacements'
Can't Fill the Bill
Keanu football flick follows a cliched playbook
By JAMI BERNARD Daily News Movie Critic
Maybe, as this movie claims, you need a lot of heart, "miles and miles of it," to win a football game. But you don't need as much heart — or brain, apparently — to make "The Replacements," an idiotic film about a sorry bunch of scab players who cross the picket line of the Washington Sentinels.
Keanu Reeves plays fill-in quarterback Shane Falco for these bad-news bores, who look like they can barely read the snack-bar menu, let alone a playbook.
"Falco, you're not even a has-been," taunts the striking quarterback whose position Shane has taken for the playoffs. "You're a never-was!"
Nyah-nyah!
In the grand tradition of movies about mighty ducks and leagues of their own and teams who have to pull together and defy the odds, these replacement Sentinels have the cards stacked against them. They're out of shape, out of practice and out of whack.
There's a former sumo wrestler, an angry ex-con, a chain-smoking soccer player and all kinds of riffraff brought together by Jimmy McGinty (Gene Hackman, in a pale imitation of his role as the last-chance coach in "Hoosiers").
Jimmy has faith in his boys, but Hackman looks as if it's taking a great deal of fortitude not to roll his eyes as he advises Shane with a chuckle: "I see the man you are and the man you want to be. Someday, they'll meet."
As the underdogs suit up for what you know will be a come-from-behind triumph, the cheerleading squad is also casting replacements — directly from the Pussycat Bar (you know, next to the airport). The head cheerleader (Brooke Langton) is hot for Shane, and vice versa. And just in case you don't get it, at the moment of a kiss, an announcer's voice tells the crowd, "And Falco scores!"
The guys finally learn teamwork — no, not during the group vomit session, but after a barroom scuffle lands them in a holding cell. They all jump up and execute a line dance to "I Will Survive." Reeves looks only slightly more comfortable dancing disco than he looked with a microchip implanted in his skull in "Johnny Mnemonic."
You
might want to sit out this season.
New
York Times - Friday, August 11th, 2000
Aw,
All They Want Is a Chance to Play
By ELVIS MITCHELL
"You're not even a has-been; you're a never-was!" a striking pro football player cracks about Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves), the honorable, stoic fill-in quarterback -- yes, scab -- in "The Replacements."
This
negligible comedy might as well come with a bouncing ball so members of
the audience can recite the dialogue along with the actors. They certainly
could do so with Gene Hackman, who plays the honorable, stoic fill-in coach
Jimmy McGinty. Mr. Hackman, looking flinty and authoritative in a selection
of tweed jackets and hats from the Tom Landry Collection, seems to be repeating
lines he used in "Hoosiers" and old United
Airlines
commercials.
"The Replacements" is so eager to please that it's like a Labrador retriever that slobbers all over you and leaves hair on your favorite sweater. Even the limp, diffident tag line on the poster -- "Pros on strike. Regular guys get to play!" -- has an air of desperation. The movie just wants to be loved; is that so wrong? Well, yes, given that "The Replacements" is a desperate, broad comedy, full of fist fights, gunplay, projectile vomiting and opposing teams in what looks like the old Oakland Raiders uniforms that made the players look like assassins.
Falco has been making a living cleaning barnacles off boats in the Washington boat basin since he choked at the Sugar Bowl of 1996 -- a year when Ohio State apparently relaxed its age restriction on college players -- and the Buckeyes were slammed in a 40-point loss; he is still coping with the shame.
When the Washington Sentinels go on strike, Falco is recruited by McGinty, who looks at him and intones somberly, "Nothing counts so much as family. . . ." Oops, that's one of Mr. Hackman's lines from "Wyatt Earp." He does tell Falco that he has to act like a leader. Mr. Reeves coasts through the picture by keeping his cool, even when he should be ruffled.
"The Longest Yard," "The Dirty Dozen" and all 30 installments of "Major League" are ransacked for "The Replacements." Instead of having a big threatening black man, this movie reinvents the genre by offering several of them: the rapper bodyguard brothers Andre (Michael Taliferro) and Jamal (Faison Love) and Earl Wilkerson (Michael Jace), whose character is as much of a walk-on as he could be, considering that he was released from prison into the custody of a pro team.
There's also the violent Los Angeles cop Bateman (a zealous Jon Favreau) and the Chevy Silverado-size sumo wrestler Jumbo (the large but gentle Ace Yonamine) to crank up the level of comic violence. And it wouldn't be a football picture without a born-again Christian (Troy Winbush). "
"The Replacements" also adds a deaf player (David Denman) to the mix. "He'll never be called offsides on an audible," McGinty notes.
Rhys Ifans, who in "Notting Hill" was so slight that his chin stubble weighed more than the rest of him, has filled out a bit and plays Nigel Gruff, the immensely talented and garrulous Welsh soccer player used as a place kicker. "Is he smoking?" asks John Madden (playing himself in the announcer booth, along with Pat Summerall), noting the cigarette dangling from Nigel's mouth under the helmet.
The movie has no pretensions, but it louses up a great subject. The 1987 N.F.L. Players Union strike, on which it is based, gave fans a chance to see some of the most unusual football ever; it was like watching the cable access version of the World Football League, with a palpable current of players' desire keeping the undertalented on the field. There is probably still a movie to be made about that strike over free agency.
Since Los Angeles is such a union town and there is talk of possible Screen Actors Guild and Writers' Guild strikes in the next year, it's odd to see a movie that essentially glorifies scabs (especially at a time when athletes like Tiger Woods are being attacked for crossing picket lines to do commercials during the actors' strike against ad companies).
During the 1987 strike, the fans kept coming out to watch the games, turning the stadium parking lots into huge tailgate rallies. The play-by-play guys shook their heads and did their jobs. In the movie, Mr. Madden and Mr. Summerall are probably supposed to offer the same kind of comic relief that "Major League" got from Bob Uecker -- who's better at using baseball for stand-up than he did as a player? -- but their lack of comment on the politics of the strike seems peculiar, too. The real-life players lost their job action, and the sight of big-ticket players crossing the picket lines opened a wound of bitterness that took years to heal; some say it never did.
"The Replacements" cheapens all this by treating the striking pros as spoiled princes. Interviewed by a news crew, a player looks into the camera and says, "You have any idea what insurance on a Ferrari costs?" And McGinty grumbles to the team's owner (Jack Warden): "You don't have any players. They all flew off to their private castles."
The closest the picture gets to the kind of guy who ended up on the field during the strike is the wide receiver Clifford Franklin (Orlando Jones), a viper-fast sprinter who can't hold onto the ball. When Franklin gets to see his pro football player heroes up close, they're flinging eggs at the bus in which he and the other scabs are traveling. He's wide-eyed, terrified and happy.
A lot of the work is done by the foot-stomper old-school stadium rock songs heard at every pro sports event -- Queen's "We Will Rock You," for example. The soundtrack, which sounds as if K-Tel put it together, includes "Unbelievable" and "I Will Survive," which is fast emerging as this summer's movie anthem. (If you close your eyes, you could be at "Coyote Ugly.") Franklin adopts it as the team's theme and leads his teammates through the Electric Slide when they're behind bars after a fight with the striking players.
"Better
lucky than good," Falco says at one point. With its feel-good exuberance,
it will probably win an audience. After all, an ugly win is still a win.
LA
Times - Friday, August 11th, 2000
A
Playbook With Few Surprises
The veteran filmmakers and talented actors in the football comedy "The Replacements" have all had better luck on other teams.
By KENNETH TURAN, Times Film Critic
Movie Info, Locations, Showtimes
The British can relax. Collectively distraught at being depicted as the bad guys in a spate of recent pictures, they’ve been supplanted by Hollywood’s latest candidate for villain du jour: unionized workers.
Not content with being a cliché-ridden, stereotype-driven comedy about average guys following their dream of football glory, "The Replacements" (inspired, if that is the right word, by the 1987 NFL strike) can’t resist making sour jokes about how whiny athletes are for even thinking about walking off the job.
Even if it’s acceptable to have that as a starting point, the film can’t get enough of portraying striking players as the kind of bullying thugs who make cruel fun of a deaf athlete and say things like "I know $5 million sounds like a lot of money, but do you have any idea what insurance on a Ferrari costs?" This from well-paid writers and actors who are thinking of going on strike themselves and would be shocked if anyone told them they should shut up and be grateful for what they have.
It would be conveniently glib to say that "The Replacements" shows what happens when replacement writers and directors get to make films, but the harsh truth is that the reverse is true. Both director Howard Deutch ("Grumpier Old Men") and writer Vince McKewin (everything from "Rush Hour" to "Operation Dumbo Drop") are veteran Hollywood players, and the result is a haphazard film about half as sophisticated as the average beer commercial.
As for the actors, every single one of them, even star Keanu Reeves, has been noticeably better in previous work. Jon Favreau and Brooke Langton were better in "Swingers," Orlando Jones was better in "Liberty Heights," Rhys Ifans was better in "Notting Hill" (as Hugh Grant’s dotty roommate). As for Gene Hackman, it’s not so much that he’s been better elsewhere (that’s a given) as that his performance as Washington Sentinels Coach Jimmy McGinty is such a pale copy of the memorable work he did as Robert Redford’s coach in "Downhill Racer."
When McGinty gets hired by owner Edward O’Neil (the venerable Jack Warden) to assemble and coach the replacement Sentinels for the final four games of the season, he is not without ideas of his own about player selection. "We’re gonna go a different way," he tells his boss, by which he means hire a bunch of misfits and weirdos, each of whom has one particular talent. For instance:
Clifford
Franklin (Jones), a super speed demon who can’t hold onto the ball;
Nigel
"The Leg" Gruff (Ifans), a Welsh place-kicker who drinks, smokes and gambles
to excess;
Daniel
Bateman (Favreau), an L.A. cop prone to excessive violence;
Jumbo
Fumiko (Ace Yonamine), a bulky Japanese sumo wrestler.
When you add in a nasty African American felon as well as a painfully macho attitude toward women epitomized by the often-repeated mantra "that’s why girls don’t play the game," you get a film that wouldn’t know where to begin without stereotypes of all kinds to lean on.
Speaking of women, one of the oddities of "The Replacements" plot is that the team’s cheerleaders seem to have walked off along with the players, leaving head cheerer Annabelle Farrell (Langton) to recruit replacements from local lap dancers and exotic performers. From then on, the film’s philosophy becomes, when in doubt--which is often--cut to shots of the gyrating cheerleaders.
Though she doesn’t date football players, Annabelle can’t keep her eyes off the team’s new quarterback, Shane Falco (Reeves), nicknamed "Footsteps" because his confidence was destroyed by a bad performance in the Sugar Bowl. Vow or no vow, Annabelle is soon rubbing yam extract onto Shane’s bruises, and their romantic arc is as predictable as the homilies of TV commentators John Madden and Pat Summerall (who may yet regret agreeing to play themselves).
Since
McGinty’s idea of coaching is throwing platitudes like "winners always
want the ball when the game is on the line" at Falco, you know the quarterback
has gotten the hang of things when he tells his guys, "Pain heals, chicks
dig scars, glory lives forever." Any replacements for that line will
be gratefully accepted.
Daily
Southtown - Movie Reviews - Friday, August 11, 2000
'Replacements'
up ... and it's good
(Rated
Three Srtars)
By
DAN PEARSON
Correspondent
A glorious tribute to scab labor and second chances, "The Replacements" scores on the big screen as the funniest movie about playing football since the Marx Brothers took the field in "Horse Feathers."
Inspired by the bitter NFL players strike of 1987, this raucous, ribald comedy about getting a second shot at success goes for the extra point in bringing home the message that football, like most professional sports, is still only a game. And games are played because those involved are having fun participating.
In this case, the pampered and overpaid striking professionals have been replaced for the past four games of the season by ragtag amateurs from all walks of life who possess some talent and a genuine affection for the game.
In the history of the cinema, movies about underdog sports teams are certainly nothing new. What makes "The Replacements" far superior to previous misfit football comedies such as "Necessary Roughness," "The Best of Times" or "Wildcats" is its innate ability to turn cliched situations and stock characters into something surprisingly fresh and brutally funny.
Aided by astute casting and a freewheeling attitude toward the sport, Howard Deutch, the director of the box-office hits "Pretty in Pink" and "Grumpier Old Men," leads an appealing ensemble of genial performers who seem to be having as much fun playing as the audience is watching them scramble on and off the field.
Filmed in Baltimore in the stadium that is home to the NFL's Ravens, the movie starring Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman is set in nearby Washington, D.C.
Hackman, who coached Olympic skiers in "Downhill Racer" and high school basketball players in "Hoosiers," again has the responsibility to make the team, and each person on it, better than they thought possible. The two-time Oscar winner, who grew up in downstate Danville, is perfectly cast as Washington Sentinels coach Jimmy McGinty.
The catch is that McGinty has less than a week to recruit, train and prepare to field a reasonably professional team. That time factor doesn't faze this crusty veteran because he already has a list of potential players he would like to suit up as a replacement team.
They include convicted felons, sumo wrestlers, music industry bodyguards, fast but clumsy grocery clerks and a former hotshot college quarterback who now scrapes barnacles off the bottoms of boats in Chesapeake Bay.
While
most of the recruits are delirious to have their moment of glory, Shane
"Footsteps" Falco is not eager to return to the public eye. He is still
plagued by his humiliating defeat in the 1996 Sugar Bowl. To play the role,
Reeves
bulked up by 20 pounds and learned to toss the pigskin with speed and accuracy.
Comic standouts on the team include former Chicago resident Jon Favreau, the writer and co-star of "Swingers," who generates big laughs as an L.A. SWAT team member now playing a defensive lineman with serious anger management issues, "Mad TV's" Orlando Jones as a fleet-footed but butter-fingered receiver and Rhys Ifans — Hugh Grant's grungy flat-mate in "Notting Hill" — as place-kicker Nigel "The Leg" Gruff, a laid-back, chain-smoking soccer star from Wales.
Balancing
the testosterone on the screen is the Sentinels' nubile and also newly
recruited cheerleading squad that is guaranteed to give their team the
home-field advantage. Brooke Langton — who appeared as Niki in
"Swingers"
— does well as Reeves' level-headed love interest and cheerleader.
Credit the bone-crushing plays on the field to second-unit stunt director Allan Graf, a former professional football player-turned-Hollywood stuntman who has made actors look like exceptional athletes in films such as "Heaven Can Wait," "Necessary Roughness," "The Program," "Jerry Maguire," "The Waterboy" and "Any Given Sunday."
A
positive and surprisingly pleasant piece of summer entertainment, "The
Replacements" proves that we can be heroes, if just for one day.
Chicago
Sun Times - Friday, August 11th, 2000
THE
REPLACEMENTS / ** (PG-13)
Shane
Falco: Keanu Reeves
Jimmy
McGinty: Gene Hackman
Annabelle:
Brooke Langton
Daniel
Bateman: Jon Favreau
Warner
Bros. presents a film directed by Howard Deutch. Written by Vince McKewin.
Running time: 114 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some crude sexual humor and
language).
BY ROGER EBERT
"The Replacements" is slap-happy entertainment painted in broad strokes, two coats thick. It's like a standard sports movie, but with every point made twice or three times--as if we'd never seen one before. And the musical score provides such painstaking instructions about how to feel during every scene, it's like the booklet that tells you how to unpack your computer.
Gene Hackman and Keanu Reeves star, and this is not a distinguished entry in their filmographies. As the movie opens, a pro football strike is under way, and the crusty old team owner (Jack Warden) has hired Jimmy McGinty (Gene Hackman) to coach the team. Hackman says he'll assemble a pickup team--but only if he can pick the players himself. His first choice is a kid named Shane Falco (Reeves), currently scraping gunk off the sides of boats, but known to McGinty as a promising quarterback.
Perhaps it will help to evoke the mood of the movie if we start with Falco's first scene. He is underwater, working on a boat, when he sees a football on the bottom. He swims down, grabs it and discovers it is a trophy--engraved with his own name! No doubt he tossed it there during a time of despair. This is why they pay screenwriters so well, to think this stuff up. Just can't keep the kid down.
There is a convention older than Shakespeare that drama requires low characters to provide the broth through which the exalted characters swim. In "The Replacements," Hackman and Reeves are the heroes, and most of the other characters provide low comedy, including a Welsh placekicker (Rhys Ifans) who chain-smokes, even while actually on the playing field, and other recruits including a sumo wrestler, a mad dog who attacks anything that is red, and a deaf lineman ("Look at it this way: He'll never be called offsides on an audible").
John Debney's musical score works on this material something like the alternate commentary track on a DVD. It comments on every scene. When Reeves talks, there is sometimes actually a violin beneath him to lend additional nobility. Hackman gets resolute music. The team has a group of pompon cheerleaders who seem to have wandered in from a soft-core film of their own, and there is a scene where their lascivious choreography on the sidelines distracts the San Diego team so severely that our guys pull off a key play. Never before in the history of football movies have the cheerleaders had a larger role than the opposing team.
An even more curious role is given to John Madden and Pat Summerall, playing themselves as play-by-play announcers. It is not that hard in the movies to create the illusion that the announcers are actually in a real stadium looking at a real game. But it's too much for "The Replacements," which stashes them in a booth with a couple of TV monitors and has them stand around awkwardly as if looking at a game. Sometimes they're not even looking in the same direction.
There are of course personal issues to be settled in the movie, and a romance between Falco and cute pompon girl Annabelle Farrell (Brooke Langton). Also the nasty first-string quarterback from the regular season (Brett Cullen), who fancies Annabelle and hates Falco. And backstage politics involving whether the owner will respect his pledge to let the old coach call the shots.
The movie's approach to labor unions is casual, to say the least. Reeves and all of his teammates are scabs, but "The Replacements" can't be bothered with details like that, and indeed seems to think the regular players are the bad guys. The standard way the media handles such situations is to consider striking players as overpaid and selfish. Of course owners, sponsors and the media, who dine off the players' brief careers, are more overpaid and more selfish, but that's the way the world turns.
The
football footage is at least mostly comprehensible; director Howard Deutch
tries to make sense of the plays, instead of opting for shapeless montages
of colors and action, as Oliver Stone did in "Any Given Sunday." But Stone's
characters were conceived on a higher level--more complex, smarter, realistic--and
his issues were more grown up, compared to the slam-bam cheerleading that
passes for thought here. It goes without saying that everything is settled
in the last play in the last seconds of the last game of the season, and
if you think "The Replacements" has the nerve to surprise you, you've got
the wrong movie.
Entertainment
Weekly - Thursday, August 10th, 2000
Scab
Picking
'The
Replacements'' -- Keanu Reeves plays a loser who makes good in the new
comedy drama
| Written
byVince McKewin and directed by Howard Deutch with little of the fizz he
brought to ''Pretty in Pink,'' The Replacements is inspired by the NFL
players' strike of 1987. And the incisive, close up photography by ''The
Sixth Sense'''s Tak Fujimoto outclasses the story by yards.
Keanu
Reeves portrays a former footballer who, with a great flourish of movie
history, is called Shane Falco. Shane scrapes a living scraping barnacles
off boats when he's recruited as quarterback for the ''crew of outsiders''
(as the publicity material calls them) assembled by coach Jimmy McGinty
(Gene Hackman) to finish out the season for the fictional Washington Sentinels.
|
 |
But then, Reeves looks breakable on the field and off -- and never more so than when consorting with his fellow ''working class'' teammates, a monochromatic study in diversity. Jon Favreau, another distinguished ''Swingers'' alum, broadly plays an L.A. cop who lunges, snarls, and tackles like a human pit bull; ''Mad TV'''s Orlando Jones fast talks as an incompetent street punk with a talent for sprinting; Rhys Ifans, Hugh Grant's wacky Welsh roommate in ''Notting Hill,'' plays a chain smoking kicker imported from the unruly English soccer fields -- a noodle of a lad next to whom Reeves looks positively strapping.
There's
also a Japanese sumo wrestler (Ace Yonamine) and a deaf athlete (David
Denman) whose first shot at glory ironically rewards deafness in the face
of picket line chanting -- replacement workers all, just doing their jobs
while the uniformly obnoxious striking players picket at best, and overturn
Falco's unprepossessing pickup truck at their violent worst. (In retaliation,
one of the ''outsiders'' blasts the windows of a striker's showily
expensive
Porsche.) The cues about privilege and resentment, money and class, are
loud but vague: Are replacement workers the only ones who play for love
of the game? Will the meek inherit the playing fields? ''Pain heals. Chicks
dig scars. Glory lasts forever,'' Falco tells his teammates like a little
Buddha.
At least one ungarbled moment of communication emerges in this labor dispute. After a melee, the pickup team lands briefly in jail, each man in private despair. Then one guy starts singing Gloria Gaynor's disco anthem ''I Will Survive,'' probably because he thinks that's the only song allowed in movies these days. Pretty soon he's dancing, a smooth line dance sashay, and other men join, and then the Welsh nutter learns the moves, and finally even Keanu Reeves feels the beat, and he awkwardly twirls and slides.
It's
a hackneyed scene, but one of the few in ''The Replacements'' that replaces
convoluted intentions with silly entertainment. Had the picketing football
players been invited to join the hoedown, the strike might have ended on
the spot. C– -- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Ain't
it Cool News - Wednesday, August 9, 2000
Peter
Blood applies the gauze to THE REPLACEMENTS
Hey folks, Harry here with a brief little bit of antiseptic to help clear things up about THE REPLACEMENTS, a film he says will play well on cable, so as you can tell.... its a ringing endorsement of the latest from the Whoa-Man... Here's our trusty bite-the-stick and amputate the leg doctor with his truth about THE REPLACEMENTS...
Peter Blood Contemplates The Replacements
First off, let me just say that this summer has been, in my mind, one of the most mediocre in memory. Nothing so far has really stunk the place up like a "Godzilla", "Lost World", or "Speed 2", but with the exception of "X-Men", nothing has been that great either. "The Replacements" fits into this summer all too well. To be honest, I have a hard time writing about mediocrity; there's just nothing to rally around or against, so I'll try to sum up what to expect this Friday if you venture to the local googolplex for a dose of Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman in a film about scab football players during an NFL strike.
Expect some nicely filmed football scenes with lots of fast edits and set to dozens of songs mixed together, some of which are horribly clichéd. I read another review talking about the music selection and these clichés, but, ya know, it's about the NFL, and I've heard some of these songs at every freakin' NFL game I've ever been to. Reality is, more often than not, cliché. Expect a very uneven tone as the movie wavers back and forth between wanting to be "Major league" and wanting to actually say something about these guys and the real players. Expect lots of scenes with strippers as cheerleader still acting like strippers. *This would have added a whole star in my review if there was any actual cheerleader nudity, but this is a PG-13 film, not an R. Expect Keanu and Gene Hackman to play fairly well together as the quarterback and head coach, but to deliver some horribly written dialogue while doing so. Expect the striking players to be more stereotyped than an asian in a 40's Bugs Bunny cartoon. Expect to laugh out loud at Jon Favreau, who contributes so well (as a hyper psychotic cop who wants to hurt someone; anyone) to the "Major League" half of the film, that I wish that were the one they had actually made. Expect a very mixed bag in performances, with the actors playing the scab players doing a much better job than most of the periphery characters. Expect a fairly conventional underdog storyline without much originality, including a bar brawl and jail scene that feel a little more real than they have in other films, but are still scenes we've seen in lots of other films.
Overall, there's nothing horrendous here; there's just nothing that great either. It'll probably play great on cable. Of course the only other wide releases this week are "Autumn in New York" and "Bless the Child", both of which look pretty awful, so if you're really itchin' to plunk down your $8 for this one, go in with low expectations and enjoy yourself knowing there are worse ways to waste 100 minutes.
-Peter
Blood out.
SF
Gate - Tuesday, August 8, 2000
At
the Movies: `The Replacements'
NEKESA MUMBI MOODY, Associated Press Writer
Breaking News Sections
(08-08) 11:45 PDT You may think you haven't seen ``The Replacements'' before, but trust me, you have.
On the surface, the film's premise seems original: Use a motley crew of ragamuffins to replace spoiled professional-league football players during a strike. But when you get down to it, ``The Replacements'' is a retread of an oft-used Hollywood plot, recalling ``Major League'' and other flicks that bunch crazy personalities together as a team and have them clash before they bond and realize -- ``Hey, I love you man!''
``The Replacements'' is set now but is loosely based on the 1987 National Football League strike, when players walked the picket line and owners used not-ready-for-prime-time players in their stead.
With four games to go until playoffs, the rich, obnoxious players of the fictional Washington Sentinels go on strike, and owner Edward O'Neil (Jack Warden) has to find a way to fill the stands. So he resurrects old-time coach Jimmy McGinty (Gene Hackman) from retirement and asks him to put together a crew to keep the team going until the real players come back.
Hackman plays a one-dimensional character based on legendary coaches of days gone by, speaking in cliches too banal to remember.
But then again, most of the film's characters are caricatures -- from the pompous, menacing strikers (apparently, real NFL stars did not act as consultants on this depiction) to the misfits McGinty fields for his team.
They include Nigel, the Welsh chain-smoking soccer star subbing as the team's kicker; Daniel, a maniac cop who acts like a raging bull when he sees a football; Jumbo, a massive sumo wrestler; and Clifford (played hilariously by Orlando Jones), a wisecracking sprinter who would be great on offense -- if he could just learn to hang on to the ball.
And of course, there's the ``normal one'' -- Keanu Reeves' Shane Falco, a former college quarterback who showed promise but quit the sport after a famously bad performance in a bowl game. Reeves plays the part in his typical reserved, monotone manner, but here it works. He convincingly plays the Average Joe -- albeit a very attractive one -- who hopes for one last chance at redemption in the pros. The level-headed Shane has to lead this green bunch, which can't even get the plays right.
Jones, best known for MAD TV appearances and 7-Up commercials, steals the movie with his bug-eyed antics and wisecracks. At one point, during a crucial game against pro players who have crossed the picket line, he looks across at his opponent and says: ``Can I have your autograph?''
There certainly are other entertaining moments, including the hypersexed dance routines of the replacement cheerleaders, who are better versed in lap dances than cheers. And of course, the film does feature Reeves in tight pants, reason enough for some of his female fans to see the movie.
Still, it is predictable to the last frame. Directed by Howard Deutch of ``Pretty in Pink'' fame, ``The Replacements'' never rises above a second-rate TV movie. It's enough to keep your interest, but nothing to cheer about.
``The
Replacements,'' a Warner Bros. film, is rated PG-13 for foul language
and sexual references. It runs 116 minutes.
Dark
Horizons - Reviews - Tuesday, August 9th, 2000
A
Review by 'aegugka' (Mixed/Positive - No Spoilers)
The Replacements is an updated take on cinematic football fares like North Dallas Forty, Necessary Roughness, and the recent On Any Given Sunday; however, The Replacements manages to accomplish one thing the mentioned films does not. It does not attempt to provide a thoughtful story, but simply manages provide the typical generic entertainment, but in a enjoyable and very humorous way.
You have your reluctant hero (Reeves), the veteran coach (Hackman), a love interest between the Quarterback and the head cheerleader, a rag tag team of various misfits that manages to find common ground and come together as a functional football team in a very short amount of time and they win the game for the playoffs, and etc., etc., etc. See what I mean? Typical and formulamatic story.
Even
though the film is formulamatic, the films stays very enjoyable. It does
not lag and keeps a steady pace. The humor is almost unrelenting at times.
The actors looks like they actually "enjoyed" themselves making this film.
Overall, a good, but generic film that is very watchable. Believe it or
not.
A Review by 'wrygrass' (Positive - Very Minor Spoilers)
To work, comedy has to be unexpected. And that is just what makes "The Replacements" work so well. Oh, not that the storyline is unexpected, far from it. But the actual comedy embedded in that plot is often delightfully quirky and quite unusual in this extremely good-natured and entertaining film. The very first scene, for example, takes place in a completely unexpected setting and proceeds in a really odd-ball way. It even contributes to the theme: here's a player who wants to play so much, he'll even simulate his passing moves underwater!
As it is most times, Keanu Reeves acting is subtle. In this film you have to watch those eyes that are so eloquent when he's discouraged and listen to those little expelled breaths that convey so well (and so humorously) his state of mind when he's near the girl he's finds attractive. It's all there, and more, if you watch closely. Reeves is completely believable as a man who needs a second chance to do something he loves--play football. It's like he's a different person on and off the field--and that's exactly what the movie was trying to convey. The development(redemption is only too slightly strong a word) of Reeves' character is excellently portrayed. That struggle to overcome provides a good solid center around which all the hilarity revolves and becomes funnier in contrast.
Gene Hackman and the rest of this ensemble cast did a great job--everyone has his or her moments. If the movie has a weakness, it's the romance. Not that Brook Langton and Reeves aren't good in the clinches--they have a definite chemistry. But it seems like there should have just been one scene between them with some real substance.
"The Replacements" also succeeds well as a football movie. The great photography and sound; the inventiveness of the script in dreaming up unusual and funny, yet still plausible, game events; and the evident attention to training for and depicting the physical moves, all add up to a movie which sports fans will relish. And yet, the football plays, are presented so clearly that even someone who's not a knowledgeable football fan can understand everything that's happening, even the first time.
Comedy
is tough--it's quite an achievement to have folks in the theater laughing
for most of two hours. And that's certainly what the audience did when
I saw "The Replacements." As well as cheering out loud for the "home team,"
clapping at the end, and coming out feeling like dancing to "I Will Survive"
like they did in the movie. As well as feeling like we can survive and
be ourselves--just like those scrappy, eccentric replacements.
A Review by 'Jackie' (Positive - No Spoilers)
I've seen the film and it is a very good lightweight film. It's not meant to test your intelligence. It's about a group of guys who get a second chance at doing something they love. They know they only get a few weeks to do it so they go for it for all it's worth. The back stories on the characters are done so that you understand each character's actions. You aren't left thinking WHY is he acting that way. The cheerleader's are a kick and add to the fun. Keanu Reeves is completely believeable as a washed up quarterback and the rest of the cast is great as well. The football scenes are very realistic (considering the team has been thrown together and has not been playing as a team for years, like the striking players). Chemistry is great between Keanu and Brooke Langton. Hackman is wonderful.
One
of the things I LOVED about the film is the great casting of Madden and
Summerall. Ignore the negative reviews and go see this film. The entire
audience (made up of a lot of men, I might add) laughed their butts off
during the whole film.
Ain't
it Cool News - Wednesday, August 2nd, 2000
LionClaw
And Flavor Dave Review THE REPLACEMENTS
El Cosmico here again, with a couple of our fun-pals, who've been kind enough to send reviews of The Replacements, the new wacky football adventure with Keanu Reeves and the guy from the 7-Up commercials. First up, LionClaw:
Long time reader, first time reviewer, blah blah blah. Unfortunately, my first review to you is a negative one for Keanu Reeves' first post-MATRIX exodus, THE REPLACEMENTS. Wish it could have been for GLADIATOR or something. ANYWAY, I must say out front that I was not expecting much from this one, nor did I have much desire to see it. I work at a big theater up here (the flagship of General Cinema actually), and we still had the print from the sneak preview last weekend, so we watched it tonight. Is it me or has Reeves jumped into way too many projects since THE MATRIX? If I recall correctly, we'll see him in about 4 or 5 movies between now and the MATRIX sequels in 2002. I dunno, just pondering.
Well, I'll just sum up my opinion. The movie failed for me because it just wasn't interesting enough, and it certainly wasn't as funny as the trailer indicated it may be. Sure, there were several scenes that were very funny, but there was far too much time in between those scenes where we are treated to boring situations and even duller dialogue. I kept waiting for Keanu to say "Whoa" during the movie, but he didn't, sorry folks. Gene Hackman was good, but not great in this, but again, there wasn't much to work with. His pregame speeches were not all that inspiring, maybe because I still remember well Al Pacino's magnificent rants in ANY GIVEN SUNDAY, a film which I kept thinking back to all the way through THE REPLACEMENTS.
Like I said, there were funny moments, but nothing monumental and nothing all too memorable. I like to grade every movie I see on a scale of 70-100 (anything below a 70 is an F and not worth grading), and I gave this one a 73. Nothin to cry home about or recomment to anyone. The one thing I really liked about the movie is the theme behind the replacement players being called up. Greedy, self-important players who only care about the paycheck, and a great line "They want 8 million, not 7" that I really agree with. So the underlying theme was significant. This was bad, but not horrific. You may come out of it in physical pain (as I did last night when I forced myself through LOSER...I swear my eyes were bleeding and I separated my shoulder. The pain!!! Oh God!!! Anyway, I just pray COYOTE UGLY ends this streak I'm on of bad movies. And hopefully, REMEMBER THE TITANS will be a good football movie. But of course nothing compares to ANY GIVEN SUNDAY. Thank God for that movie. Can't wait to buy the DVD on September 1. Later.
Lionclaw
Now, our pal Flavor Dave chimes in...
This is Flavor Dave from Kansas hitting you up with an early review of "THE REPLACEMENTS" seen at a sneak preview in Kansas City (on the outskirts of OZ). A small gag in the throat at the best:
The NFL has an off-season where the players get to balance their checkbooks, take it easy and wax their fancy cars. I’m starting to think that the film industry needs an off-season as well, preferably in the summertime. I have just the film to show for this vacation proposal, THE REPLACEMENTS. THE REPLACEMENTS is another rotten vegetable thrown into this summer’s pungent stew of unbearable films. I barely made it through ME, MYSELF, AND IRENE and I’ve learned to forgive that film after seeing THE REPLACEMENTS, the newest sour apple in the unforgiving genre known as football films.
One must contemplate the film’s setup though, just as I did before seeing it. Football players around the nation go on strike, so the teams round up the best replacement players around to keep the season going. Sound good so far? You bring in some very convincing actors such as Gene Hackman, and let’s see, Gene Hackman. For the chick factor you have Keanu Reeves. The rest of the replacement team is made up of the typical typecast players: a couple of fat guys, a convicted felon, a wide receiver who can’t catch, a kicker who smokes on the field (oh, how funny!!), an ex-swat team member, a deaf guy, and that little sweetheart Keanu Reeves as the quarterback who could. Where’s the Dirty Dozen when you need them?
The film tries to balance a serious story with absurd sightgag skits. Gene Hackman plays the coach, and tries to mirror his very remarkable coaching performance from HOOSIERS in this film. It doesn’t reflect. The film has too many empty stadium scenes between the coach and his ‘ah shucks’ replacement quarterback. Another football film that came out recently with the empty stadium inspiration speech is ANY GIVEN SUNDAY by Oliver Stone.
That film worked, but it was also a commentary on how absurd the sport has gotten in terms of money and power. In that film, the quarterback played by Jaime Foxx throws up when he gets nervous on the field. In THE REPLACEMENTS, half the team throws up on the field in a scene that was supposed to be funny. I wasn’t laughing, but the majority of the audience was. How much more longer are we going to have to sit through films built on gross out humor? I stopped laughing a long time ago. I actually looked forward to the scenes with sports commentator John Madden in this film, something I shouldn’t have to do.
The film was directed by Howard Deutch, who has brought us the screen gems THE ODD COUPLE II and GETTING EVEN WITH DAD. Deutch commits onscreen murder by using the song "I Will Survive" in not just one but three different scenes, and once in a gut-wrenching sing along jail cell sequence. If seeing Keanu Reeves dancing to a disco song is your cup of tea, THE REPLACEMENTS was specially hand-molded just for you. Enjoy!
Another scene has the star quarterback Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves) alone in a bar with the team’s head cheerleader (Brooke Langton). At the beginning of the film, she says that she doesn’t date football players, with extra emphasis on the fact that she doesn’t date quarterbacks. Did the screenwriter, Vince McKewin, actually expect us to believe that they weren’t gonna hook up? Back to the bar scene though. Falco is at one end of the bar, the cheerleader at the other. Just when you think the world might have some justice left, Sting’s "Every Breath You Take" starts to play as they start to, you guessed it, step towards each other. The absolute horror.
If
you were waiting for my list of positives about the film, there are none.
This film is a complete mess. I saw the film with a sneak preview audience
and people seemed to really enjoy it, which made me start to think the
room was full of evil robots. The lady beside me was slapping her knee
through the entire film, even during the dramatic scenes. I was tempted
to ask her if she was slapping her knee because the film was so funny,
or she kept thinking about other things she could actually be doing besides
watching THE REPLACEMENTS. Save your money people and rent WILDCATS for
a silly football film.
Tuesday,
August 1st, 2000
From:
Whizat1688
Review:
"(...)well the replacements was soooooooooo funny i have to tell you! i
really don't like football but this is a really funny movie you should
see it. but the music sometimes isn't really all that great except for
that "i will survive" song, and some parts were just blah! it was really
funny and hillarious! Keanu is known for being a wooden actor blah blah
blah! i just have to say i can't help staring at his soooo HOT face and
he did a pretty good/ok job in acting in this movie so don't say anything
wrong about keanu cuase he can be a bad actor at times but he is a really
good one! thats all! bye
Dark
Horizons - Reviews - Monday, July 31st, 2000
A
Review by 'Tavrick' (Positive - No Spoilers)
It is not everyday that I find myself enjoying a movie about football, seeing how I am not the biggest sports fan in the world, but "The Replacements" was one of those movies that had me cheering, yelling, laughing out loud, grunting and jeering during game play and making the occasional "oh, no you didn't!", "under-the-breath-type" comments directly to the screen.
"The Replacements" is a film based on the 1987 football player's strike and more particularly how it affects a franchise team called the Washington Sentinels. During the Strike, the Sentinels becomes comprised of a group of misfit players. For example, Franklin (played by Orlando Jones of MadTV and the "Make 7Up Yours" Commercials) works in a convenient store and can chase down the fastest Twinkie thief without much effort; Bateman (Jon Favreau), is an over-enthusiastic cop who has opened one too many cans of whoop-ass during working hours; The Jackson Brothers (Faizon Love, Michael Taliferro) are club bouncers who are thick, mean and love guns a little too much. The list of crazies goes on and on. The only normal player appears to be Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves). Shane is a former college quaterback who plays with much heart but is solely remembered from the 1996 Sugar Bowl game where he lost by 45 points.
Of
course, the team makes it to the Playoffs. Of course, they kick some major
ass on the field. You know that this would happen because that is a formula
seen over and over again with comedic sport films (see "Unnecessary Roughness"
to understand my point). What makes this movie fun to watch is how
unusually quarky the team players are, not to mention watching a cheerleading
squad that is made up of full time strippers. Ever wanted to see girl-on-girl
action on the football field?
Well,
this is your film!
Do NOT make the mistake of going into this film looking for plot twists, convoluted storylines and performances of a lifetime (didn't I mention that Keanu was in this film? 'Nough said.). You should, however, be looking to have a few laughs and feel good.
If
that is what you want, then you will enjoy this film. 4 out 5 stars
A Review by 'Miles Archer' (Negative - No Spoilers)
While
I have never sent in a review before, I feel the need to let the filmgoing
public know just how bad The Replacements is. I saw a screening of the
film about a month ago and I would not be writing this even now if I had
not read previous reviews on this site which did not condemn the movie.
This is the worst film I have seen since Batman and Robin three years ago.
Gene Hackman should be embarassed that he is in this film. The beginning,
where Keanu (who, believe it or not, is far to good for this film) finds
a football as he is cleaning the side of a boat and begins to pretend he
is playing a football game, is really, really stupid. The middle, where
the team dances to "I Will Survive" is not only really really stupid but
also painfully unfunny. The end is so predictable I would not even
spoil the film by telling you what happens. This movie is bad in every
way that it feels like a script that should have been tossed to the bottom
of the pile by even the lowest of script readers. This is someones horrible,
horrible mistake and hopefully they will pay for it. As for Keanu, he's
just lucky we liked The Matrix so much that he doesn't need to work
anymore. Didn't they make movies like this ten years ago? Oh, well... If
you liked Necessary Roughness, you'll LOVE The Replacements. I mean that
in the worst possible way. Please don't go see this movie. You've been
warned.
JoBlo
Reviews the movie 'The Replacements' - Sunday, July 3oth, 2000
THE
REPLACEMENTS RATING: 6.5/10 --> So-so
Review
Date: July 30, 2000
Director:
Howard Deutch
Writer:
Vince McKewin
Producer:
Dylan Sellers
Actors:
Keanu Reeves as Shane Falco
Gene Hackman as Jimmy McGinty
Brooke Langton as Annabelle Farrell
Genre:
Comedy
Year
of Release: 2000
Whoa! Neo is back and he's left the Matrix and his trademark expression behind, with the intent of suiting up as the replacement football quarterback in this fictionalized tale of a true-life event. What that basically means is that replacement players really did take over the NFL during the 1987 football players strike, but the situations and characters presented in this movie, never really happened.
PLOT: A football player's strike forces team owners to recruit everyday men with football experience to make up their professional teams. The Washington Sentinels bring in a legendary coach to enroll their players, most of whom turn out to be major underdogs with unique styles. So can this team of misfits lead their organization into the playoffs?
CRITIQUE: The most difficult reviews to write are for those films which aren't great, aren't bad, but fall somewhere in between. This movie is the perfect example of such a film. It's an okay movie which starts off slow, offers a few chuckles here and there, many colorful characters, Keanu in decent form and sexy cheerleaders all stacked in a mediocre plot filled with cliché upon cliché. In fact, there isn't one original thing about this movie. When I stopped counting the cliches, I had personally come up with "the underdog cliché", the "old coach given a second chance cliché", "the final play decides all cliché", "the motley crew of characters rising above all challenges cliché"... And unlike Oliver Stone's ANY GIVEN SUNDAY (7/10), this movie doesn't make you feel like you're really part of the game either. It doesn't really give you any real insight as to the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of the football league or offer any rich acting performances. In fact, it basically makes every single real professional football player seem like a stuck-up, egotistical, heartless asshole (granted, I'm sure some of them really are like that, but every single one of them?!).
Having said that, the film doesn't really pretend to be anything more than what it is either. It's fluff, pure and simple. The movie is packed, and I mean packed with various rockin' tunes prime to make you want to boogie. At least 20-30 songs must be featured in this movie including such favorites as Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll", "Takin' Care of Business", "Good Vibrations", "I Will Survive", "Unbelievable", as well as another CD worth of others.
I also enjoyed all of its characters, believe it or not...despite much of their one-dimensionality. Jon Favreau was particularly good as the extremely aggressive player, but most of the others also kept me entertained, including Orlando Jones as the butter-fingered receiver, Rhys Ifans as the Welsh star kicker who doesn't mind a smoke even while he's playing and the rest of the tubby bunch also. Their camaraderie is what probably kept me in this game, despite the tepid attempt at romance between Keanu and the very pretty Brooke Langton (who incidentally, subscribed to the ol' "I don't date football players cliché" early on in the film...) and the very plain directing style. Gene Hackman was also solid, but mostly in a "punching in his acting card"-type of way. But in the end, how could anyone really dislike any movie that replaces the regular cheerleaders with...well, lap-dancing strippers! Yippee! Of course, you can't miss the cheerleaders because the director makes sure to pan over to them at every other stoppage in play. But hey, for fluff, I suppose this film works. For a comedy, it's so-so. For substance, reality, drama, romance or any kind of originality, it doesn't. Your turn to choose!
Little
Known Facts about this film and its stars: Keanu Reeves, who gained 23
pounds for this role, was apparently able to throw the football about 15
yards when he first came into this film's training camp. By the midway
point of production, he was firing bullets some 50 or 60 yards downfield.
Brooke Langton, who plays the head cheerleader in this movie, also played
Nikki, the object of Jon Favreau's affection in an awesome little movie
titled SWINGERS. She also played Samantha on TV's popular "Melrose Place"
series from 1996 to 1998. Director Howard Deutch is probably best known
for directing some underrated comedies from the 80s including PRETTY IN
PINK, THE GREAT OUTDOORS and SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL. He's also been married
to TV actress Lea Thompson ("Caroline in the City") since 1989. The city
and stadium used for the fictional team in this movie was Baltimore and
its PSINet Stadium, home of the real-life Baltimore Ravens. Ironically,
the film was shot there during the actual football season. They would basically
shoot in Camden Yards when the Ravens were out-of-town, and elsewhere when
the team returned to their home base. Real-life football commentators John
Madden and Pat Summerall play themselves in this film, calling every game.
www.thereelsite.com/
- Movie Review
'The
Replacements'
Grade:
D
Review
Posted: July 30, 2000
Let's talk about Keanu Reeves. He first showed up on the radar as a pretty boy in Dangerous Liaisons, way back in 1988. He looked great in period costumes, and all was well so long as he didn't have too many lines. Then came Ted "Theodore" Logan, the clueless dude from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. Bill was always slightly smarter than Ted, but Ted was more intuitive -- better with the ladies, and first to make a new friend or express concern over a new enemy. Much as I enjoyed Keanu's performance, it didn't work as well when Ted also appeared in Point Break, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and most of Keanu's other movies. Clearly, Keanu had found the one part he really understood. He plays Ted very, very well -- could it be that that's what Keanu is really like? -- but he's always out of his depth playing anything else. After Johnny Mnemonic, I vowed never to see another Keanu Reeves movie, with the provision that another Bill & Ted sequel wouldn't count.
Then came The Matrix, which seemed to be a major turning point in Keanu's career. I broke my vow on the screaming recommendation of a friend, and witnessed Keanu's transformation. Actors don't need to be able to do everything. Some actors can act, some can do Shakespeare, some can make people laugh. For The Matrix, Keanu learned kung fu, and all was forgiven. Action stars can get away with not being able to act, with being irredeemably stupid. If Keanu continued to kick ass, I reasoned, who gave a shit if he could only play one character? The Matrix was, of course, a huge hit, and I found myself looking forward not just to its inevitable sequels but also to a new badass Keanu Reeves.
For some unimaginable reason, however, he picked The Replacements as his follow-up to The Matrix. This movie is so forgettable that I could barely remember the beginning by the time the movie ended. Did the female lead character even have a name? Keanu spent the whole movie looking totally blank, as if he knows that he's incapable of expressing a recognizable, believable emotion so he just practices saying his lines with as little interpretation as possible. I've heard people argue that that's actually his main appeal as a movie star -- he's such a blank slate that audiences can impose their own personality over his empty features. That's as good a theory as any.
The Replacements is one of those sports movies that makes a halfhearted attempt at being all inspirational, throws in a few jokes and a love interest, and calls it a day. Who gives a rat's ass? The best thing about it is that it's not so bad as to be unwatchable; it moves along, and there's never too much time before we get a quasi-exciting football scene or a joke that gets at least a little chuckle. There might be a couple of belly laughs along the way, but The Replacements is far too conservative to go that extra mile for something genuinely funny and original. The dialogue is highly mediocre, the characters one-dimensional, and the acting barely present.
The story begins with a strike by professional football players, creating the need for Gene Hackman to come in as head coach and hire a ragtag bunch of replacements, or scabs. Keanu plays Shane Falco, a brilliant college quarterback who blew the big game and never made it to the pros. The replacements are the quirky losers you would expect -- everything about this movie is exactly what you'd expect. If you explained the premise to any six year old, the kid could have written this entire script verbatim. The standout of the bunch is Jon Favreau (Swingers, PCU, Deep Impact) as an overly-aggressive SWAT officer who knocks people down a lot, both on and off the field.
Early on, Keanu meets Annabelle (Brooke Langton; I checked the Internet Movie Database and now I do remember him calling her that once), the head cheerleader. Even though it's four games from the end of the season, Annabelle is in the midst of hiring new cheerleaders. Did the cheerleaders go on strike, too? No explanation is ever given for this, but it gives the movie a chance to show some goofy cheerleader auditions (Look! A fat girl auditioning to be a cheerleader! That's comedy!), and ultimately to have Annabelle hire a bunch of strippers to enact extra-sexy cheerleader routines to be edited in to the exciting football scenes. I think the thinking here was that American males would love a movie with a balance between football, comedy, and gyrating female flesh. This may indeed prove to be a winning formula -- despite the fact that the football action is clichéd and choppy, the comedy mostly stale and tepid, and the gyrating female flesh consistently clothed.
Predictably, the girl breaks her ban on dating football players, Keanu becomes a leader, and the ragtag group of replacements learn to work together as a team. Gene Hackman spouts inspirational nonsense, the black prison inmate makes friends with the white SWAT team guy, and the deaf guy gets a blow job from one of the stripper-cheerleaders. In its half-asleep, directionless sort of way, The Replacements will probably succeed at entertaining anyone who likes football and has low expectations. Every moment that works only works because it's a pure reenactment of a pre-existing cliché, but there are enough of those moments -- moments that work -- strung together that the movie is easy to watch. For all its lack of anything original or interesting, there's little that actually fails to work on a purely surface, moment-to-moment level.
Which, now that I think about it, is kind of depressing. If the filmmakers are competent on any level, why would they bother to spend the amount of time it takes to make a film on something so bland and unexciting? It's one thing when a movie is spectacularly bad, when the people who made it are totally incompetent or misguided. But this film is exactly what it sets out to be -- a mildly entertaining waste of time that no one will remember four months from now. It must take a certain level of cynicism for a studio to produce a film like this. But it will probably make its money back. Hell, it could even turn into a big hit when it opens nationwide August 11th. I suppose there'll always be an audience for completely conventional films; I just wish there was a little more studio effort and support going towards the unconventional.
Reviewed
by Josh Costello.
Ain't
it Cool News - Friday, July 28th, 2000
The
Bishop takes a look at THE REPLACEMENTS
The Sports film, especially the Football film, has a long proud history. It made Ronald Reagan a star and has served as the background for everything from smart comedies like HEAVEN CAN WAIT to horror films such as THE FACULTY to thrillers about terrorism like BLACK SUNDAY to tear jerkers the likes of BRIAN'S SONG, and of course there has been the teenage genre and it's VARSITY BLUES like retreads. But the straightup football action/adventure films like NUMBER ONE, THE LONGEST YARD, SEMI-TOUGH, NECESSARY ROUGHNESS, and NORTH DALLAS FORTY are Father Geek's favorites. And it is into this arena that THE REPLACEMENTS finds itself placed. To survive and trive there is as tough as the sport itself. Everything must click. All the team players must fit together like a well oiled machine. The Bishop sent Father Geek his review today, and this motion picture seems to have fallen just a yard short at the end of the game. Here's what he had to say...
The Replacements By The Bishop Don "Mack" Donald
Teamwork is the cornerstone to any decent sports team, and teamwork is also what makes the sports movie work at a maximum level. Some athletic films don’t believe in teamwork, thus rendering them (ANY GIVEN SUNDAY, BLUE CHIPS) cynical and condescending. THE REPLACEMENTS is a new football story about teammates, not stars. About a love for the game, not greed. It’s also a funny and silly sports film that is nothing new to most audiences, just a gentle reworking of a million clichés we’ve seen before.
Keanu Reeves stars as Shane Falco, a former college quarterback who now spends his days scraping sea bacteria off the underbellies of yachts. When a NFL strike shuts down the season for the professional players, retired coach McGinty (Gene Hackman) recruits a eclectic group of former players to form a new team for the Washington Senators and finish out the football season.
The script by Vince McKewin, as I mentioned earlier, is nothing to write home about. A retooling and outright theft of many sport film clichés, THE REPLACEMENTS could be very easily dismissed if it wasn’t so lovable. Director Howard Deutch has fashioned a career out of lovable "bad" films (ARTICLE 99) but of lately has dwindled to generating utter crap (GRUMPIER OLD MEN, ODD COUPLE 2). THE REPLACEMENTS brings Deutch back to square one in terms of material, and he makes the best of it. By keeping the spirits high and the logic loose, the film works much better than it deserves to.
There are two things that are very wrong with THE REPLACEMENTS, and they are as follows:
1) Poorly constructed. When the Senators begin playing their games, the film keeps a close eye on how the team and their rivals play football. When the Senators begin to win, the film suddenly becomes a highlight reel for all the good plays the team makes instead of keeping a fair balance between the opposing teams. In the final game of the picture, we don’t even see the opposing team make any offensive plays at all. These editing choices robs the characters of the joy of whatever victory they gain. By losing the struggle, how can we enjoy the triumph?
2) The music cues. Some films reach for the best and brightest in current popular music. Others go for small, buried treasures which surprise the audience and goose soundtrack sales. But there are some films out there that do not have a clue what to do with their music and embarrass themselves with idiotic songs. THE REPLACEMENTS actually contains the beat-into-the-ground arena anthems ROCK ‘n’ ROLL PART 2 by Gary Glitter and Queen’s WE WILL ROCK YOU. Also - God help us all - Gloria Gaynor’s I WILL SURVIVE pops up more than once to remind us just how unfortunate it is when songs have low licensing rates. Couple that with some "fresh jams" from C &C Music Factory (!), The Police’s EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE (Hey, these guys had lots of good songs to choose from, why must we stick to just this one?) and two, count ‘em two Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch cues. And this isn’t even a period piece. Yuck.
Even with a lousy soundtrack, THE REPLACEMENTS survives with the help of it’s actors. I am a fan of Keanu Reeves. There, I said it. He’s a good, solid performer and always becomes the dramatic base in which other actors can bounce off of. THE REPLACEMENTS being the first film of his post-MATRIX success, Reeves seems to be enjoying the rugged role of a burned out quarterback with a lot to prove and little profit to show for it. He’s smart in the role where other actors would have been arrogant. Gene Hackman is a master, so it’s no surprise that he brings to the table another fantastic performance as the warm and knowing coach. The role even gives Hackman a chance to smile and laugh. The rest of the fine ensemble includes: Orlando Jones (the current spokesman for 7-Up, but most importantly a scene stealer in Mike Judge’s OFFICE SPACE), Rhys Ifans (The slob from NOTTING HILL), Faizon Love, Brook Langton, Jack Warden, and nearly stealing the film, Jon Favreau (SWINGERS) as an deranged cop-turned-defenseman.
Those
looking for a small diversion before the football season begins should
really respond to THE REPLACEMENTS. It’s nothing special, yet provides
a good time and some substantial football action before the other, pretentious
looking, football film REMEMBER THE TITANS with Denzel Washington opens
in late September.7/10