Additional On-site Coverage: Jeff Chastine, Joel Fuernsinn, Jeff Wilson, Laurie Wilson
The Replacements was exactly what we wanted out of a football movie. It was 80% football scenes, 20% plot, and was 100% fun. Briefly, the bad guys are the evil, greedy professional members of the Washington Sentinels who are on strike because they're having trouble making their insurance premiums on their Ferraris. The big villain is their quarterback who does everything he can to make sure that you hate him by the end of the movie. The good guys are the scabs chosen by a replacement coach played by Gene Hackman. Naturally, the team is made up of these undiscovered athletes who are a motley crew of backgrounds and types. There's a love interest cheerleader. There's our hero, played by Keanu Reeves, playing the nice guy with a great arm who lost a critical bowl game at the college level and never lived that down. The rest of it is formula.
There's a lot of comedy in this movie that stems from the fact that the entire supporting cast are at the same level in acting as the football players that they're playing. They had nothing to lose and played their roles with enthusiasm and heart. The writers and the director knew enough about football to combine good slapstick with some very interesting plays. The football scenes were spectacular. When Keanu throws a touchdown pass, half the theater cheered as if they were in the stands at Grant Field. No recycled high-school footage here -- you're at the game, it's real, and you've got better seats than those poor shleps on the 50 yard line. What's more, you've got John Madden and Pat Summerall calling the game with straight faces.
Don't think too hard about the movie, though. It does take some liberties in getting where it wants to go. Even the football novice will note that some of the banter in the huddle certainly went on long enough to draw a delay of game flag. And do coaches and cheerleaders go on strike when football players do? Apparently so, in this world. Another plot hole included the fact that this football team began playing like professionals within a week or so of meeting. Given the limited number of games in a football season, you have to just accept this. The funniest plot hole happens when Evil quarterback tells the Good quarterback that the love interest is "too good for you". How he knew that a relationship was developing might have been explained in a missing scene. We could only assume that the Evil guy had omniscience or psychic abilities. There are a whole slew of minor inconsistencies that are located in the 20% of plot that make up the movie. We also didn't believe the romantic subplot one bit. For a bit of fun, one of the players goes out of the game with a bad knee injury. Look for him to appear, miraculously cured, in the last dance sequence at the end of the final game. Lastly, the movie finishes with an unnecessary voiceover by Gene Hackman that left us very unsatisfied as moviegoers but very happy as movie critics.
All in all, we liked this movie. We give it a 6 on the good movie scale, and it kicks the point-after for a 7 on the bad movie scale. Definitely go see this one!
Our Drive-In Totals:
0 dead bodies (hm, this is getting to be a trend...)
0 breasts (not even the strippers, surprisingly enough)
1 hysterical cheerleader audition
1 long, underwater glory moment
1 sumo dance
1 spanking
1 play-by-play kiss
1 safety message about wearing red shirts
1 soccer cheer
1 telegraphed bar fight
1 nonverbal come-on
1 pickup truck that can roll over and play dead
2.5 electric slides
4 football games
22 barnacles
Many overly-obvious product placements
7 inspirational lines from Hackman
4 inspirational lines from Keanu
13 minutes of useless romantic subplot
3 fears with 14 legs
1 completely unexpected and useless near-end-of-movie soliloquy
Kung Fu
Gun Fu
Football Fu
Random-bar-prop Fu
Blocking dummy Fu
Truck Fu
Scraper Fu
Bucket Fu
Egg Fu
Egg Fu Munch
Egg Fu Yuck!
Good Movie Scale: 6 out of 10
Bad Movie Scale: 7 out of 10
