Wolff rating: FAIR
Plot summary: Football team full of scabs replaces the pros for the last four games of a season due to striking players.
Biased, pithy comments: This almost got a NOT BAD. It was *that close* until I hit the voiceover at the end, which was like the thump-point in a book (that point when the book produces such an annoying moment of illogic, plot hole, or political screed that you throw it across the room and the spine goes ``thump'' against the wall). While most of the movie is a well-meaning, if low-key and cliched, football movie with Hackman phoning in his performance and sobbing strings holding up Reeves' pathos (since he couldn't be depended on to act it), the movie loses its superego with the dumbest, most obvious voiceover that it actually hits you in the face and leaves a mark. For the rest of the movie, the supporting actors (like Jones and Yonamine) shine in the Replacements, but they don't get enough screen time, and their own problems are subsumed to the plodding, unoriginal plot. We never grow to hate anyone (even the obnoxious pros seem like they're in some other movie), and as a result the movie doesn't have a sharp focus---it just ambles along in its little fantasy world being sort of a movie-of-the-week. Anyone who knows anything at all about sports knows how ludicrous the football is, from cheerleaders who also go on strike (which is a neat trick given that they are largely unpaid volunteers in real life), to Reeves removing his helmet onfield, to Reeves not showing up to a game where he's the second-string quarterback, and to the tactical decisions in late-game positions that even *I* wouldn't do playing my brother in ``NBA2K1'' on my Dreamcast. Indeed, the only thing I felt was authentic is that they got a soccer player to be their placekicker---if anyone can boot the ball 65 yards, it's a footy man. Skip and watch any of a number of other, better football movies (``Varsity Blues'', ``The Longest Yard'', and dare I say it ``The Waterboy'').
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Kneau Reeves, Gene Hackman, Brooke Langton, Orlando Jones, Faizon Love, Ace Yonamine.
Directed by: Howard Deutch