Cast: Keanu Reeves, Gene Hackman, Jack Warden, Brooke Langton, Jon Favreau, Rhys Ifans, Orlando Jones, Brett Cullen, Faizon Love, Michael Taliferro, John Madden, Pat Summerall
Director: Howard Deutch
Producer: Dylan Sellers
Screenplay: Vince McKewin
Cinematography: Tak Fujimoto
Music: John Debney
U.S. Distributor: Warner Brothers
There are good sports movies, indifferent sports movies, and bad sports movies. The Replacements in nestled somewhere between the latter two. All films of this genre have a few things in common: the protagonists are underdogs, the odds against them are high, and they invariably win the end-of-the-movie contest (Rocky may be the only sports movie ever to violate this last precept, although the title character still scored a "moral victory" of sorts). There are two elements that differentiate the best sports movies from the legions of wannabes - a reverence for the mystique of the game and a focus on building real characters. Neither of these aspects is apparent in The Replacements, which treats the sport of football (not to mention its fans) shabbily, is full of obvious glitches, and force-feeds viewers with ready-made stereotypes. Hoosiers or The Natural, this ain't.
It's the football season, and the regular players, worried about salary cap issues, have decided to go on strike. But the games must go on, so, as in the real 1987 NFL strike, the owners decide to proceed with replacement players (also known as "strike-breakers" or "scabs"). In Washington D.C., the Sentinels are three wins away from the playoffs with four games to play. The owner (a crusty Jack Warden) brings in maverick coach Jimmy McGinty (Gene Hackman) and gives him full control over the replacement team and its personnel - whatever it takes to achieve those three victories. McGinty's approach is unorthodox - he recruits gangsters, an ex-Marine, a sumo wrestler, a deaf man, a convict who's given a five week work release from prison, and a wiry Welshman with a lethal kick. And, for his quarterback, he goes after former college phenom Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves), who dropped out of football after he led his team to a 45-point defeat in the 1996 Sugar Bowl. On his first day of practice, Falco earns the ire of the Sentinels striking quarterback, Martel (Bret Cullen) and catches the eye of the lead cheerleader, Annabelle (Brooke Langton). Despite her prohibition against dating players, it's obvious that these two are going to end up together - just as there's no doubt that McGinty's misfits are going to pull together (to the unlikely tune of the disco hit "I Will Survive") and execute a few upsets.
By their nature, sports movies are crowd-pleasers. Even the most ineffectual ones, like The Mighty Ducks and Mystery, Alaska have the ability to cause viewers to cheer (if a film of this genre can't accomplish at least that much, it must have been constructed by a ham-fisted director, indeed). So it should come as no surprise to learn that the audience with which I attended The Replacements reacted at all the appropriate moments. What director Howard Deutch proves unable to do is to get us to respond as passionately to the characters in this drama as to their win/lose situations. But that's what happens with a lack of depth.
For Deutch, a veteran comedy director, this is a first venture into the sticky arena of the sports movie, and he acquits himself adequately. Deutch started his career as a disciple of John Hughes (he helmed both Pretty In Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful, two mainstays of the '80s teen movement). A decade after that, he hooked up with the veteran team of Jack Lemmon and the late Walter Matthau for a couple of sequels: Grumpier Old Men and The Odd Couple II. That's the somewhat unlikely path that has led Deutch to one of the few sports movies not scripted by Ron Shelton.
The Replacements was cast strategically. In the wake of The Matrix, Keanu Reeves has revived a flagging career, and he is viewed as a viable box office draw. Gene Hackman played a down-on-his luck coach in Hoosiers, so why not try him again here? (Side note: comparisions end there. Hackman's character in Hoosiers had a personality and a backstory. Here, he lacks both.) Rhys Ifans made people laugh in Notting Hill, so he's in. Brooke Langton, an ex-Melrose Place actor, is cute and perky. Jon Favreau (Swingers) and Orlando Jones (Liberty Heights) look familiar. Everyone else is cheap and fits their parts.
Football purists are going to cringe early and often during The Replacements, which gets so many things wrong about the sport it is portraying that one has to wonder whether screenwriter Vince McKewin has more than a passing knowledge of the game. For example, the pro football season does not end on Thanksgiving Day. On that hallowed holiday, Dallas does not play an away game. John Madden and Pat Summerall do not broadcast four consecutive games involving the same team. Fans will not cheer replacements players and boo returning regulars. And multiple, flagrant penalties receive ejections. Am I nit-picking? Perhaps, but the cumulative effect of so many inconsequential errors is to damage the film's overall credibility.
The dialogue is as ripe as it gets, offering such gems as "I look at you and I see two men: the man you are and the man you ought to be. When you meet, you'll be one hell of a ball player" and "Winners always want the ball when the game's on the line." Veteran football broadcasters Madden & Summerall provide a running play-by-play commentary that sounds scripted and has none of the spontaneous chemistry that marks their actual TV work. (And why is it that Summerall looks like he's on death's door? Has he been ill?) As a result, instead of lending a sense of verisimilitude to the film, they provide little more than awkward background chatter.
Like 90% of all sports movies, The Replacements is about a group of "has been" and "never was" players seeking redemption. Falco not only finds it on the football field, but in the bedroom as well. Aside from the feel-good impulse, there's not much here. Lip service is paid to the way high paid prima donnas now dominate sports, and how half of the talk is about money rather than on-field activities, but those are used as plot devices, not as thematic fodder. After all, we're supposed to like the replacements and dislike the guys they take over for, and how better to accomplish that than to make the regulars overpaid bullies?
For a mid-August release, The Replacements is surprisingly watchable. But those hoping for some good football action would do better turning in to a Sunday afternoon pre-season match than heading for a multiplex.
© 2000 James Berardinelli