THE REPLACEMENTS ZERO STARS (out of four) -a review by Bill Chambers (bill@filmfreakcentral.net)
starring Keanu Reeves, Gene Hackman, Brooke Langton, Jack Warden screenplay by Vincent McKewin directed by Howard Deutch
Did the makers of The Replacements realize that Major League had already been reinvented as a football movie, under the title Necessary Roughness ? (So indiscreetly, in fact, that the former's sunglasses-wearing baseball logo became a sunglasses-wearing football one.) Given how many other motion pictures The Replacements, which appears to have been edited in a blender, openly (and badly) plagiarizes, I'm sure the answer is "yes." "But," they'd very possibly tell you, "our movie has Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman; theirs had Sinbad and Kathy Ireland."
"But," I'd very possibly reply, "your movie is from the director of The Great Outdoors, theirs The Man with One Red Shoe." In this example, Reeves and Hackman are nothing more than marketing advantages.
Reeves' casting does the product itself no favours; I never thought I'd find myself writing that he's too interesting an actor for Shane Falco, a character whose sole defining trait is his non-sports-related job of scraping barnacles from docked boats. When he leaves this task, to fill in for the Washington Sentinels' picketing quarterback (also white, natch), it seems to suck the life out of him; Falco observes the law of comedy screenwriting that says the leading man, unless a former stand-up, shalt not be granted the same funny dialogue and wacky affectations of his co-stars because he already has the looks.
This maxim is also common to producer Jerry Bruckheimer's schlocky actioners, which may as well be official comedies. (See Nicolas Cage in Gone in Sixty Seconds.) I searched for his name in The Replacements ' closing credits and was shocked by its absence; the film's requisite recruiting montage, once a staple of the sports genre and since co-opted by Bruckheimer, could be substituted by that of Armageddon and few outside the know would catch the switcheroo.
As the retired football coach returning to the field during a player's strike on a lost coin toss, Hackman handpicks the substitute team in a scene replete with headshots that could just as easily have unfolded in a casting agency. He rounds up, in no special order: a Sumo wrestler; an aggro SWAT cop (Swingers' Jon Favreau, discovering his inner ham); a gentle deaf guy; a college-football leaguer (Keanu); a Welsh soccer pro (Notting Hill 's Rhys Ifans); a Born-again; a grumpy convict; twin thugs; and, but of course, a Gloria Gaynor-loving sprinter (wiry Orlando Jones). These bad news bores are unfairly asked to win two out of three games. That they'll manage this, albeit with 'side-splitting' difficulty, is presumed (why break formula in the climax, of all places?); ergo, after they lost their first match, I wondered why a theatre should bother projecting the remaining reels at all.
It's not as if The Replacements is entertaining enough to supersede the foreordained, unless your idea of fun is not one but three prostitutions of Gaynor's "I Will Survive", or a nervous vomit sequence (if you saw Any Given Sunday, what you're now experiencing is called déjà vu ). The jokes are fusty and/or unpleasant--the filmmakers treat us like a Jerry Springer audience, cuing us to laugh dirisively at the sight of overweight dancers and whatnot. (Golden oldies include the love interest (Brooke Langton, redeemingly sexy) who drives so recklessly it scares Falco, a note-for-note update of a much wittier aside from Annie Hall.)
The Replacements also wears its moral heart on the wrong sleeve, and in doing so, actually perpetuates more clichés. We learn that football is for heroes, but cheerleading is a dishonourable trade--the head of the cheerleading squad must also ply in a more legitimate profession, as a barkeep in her deceased father's establishment, thus permitting moments in which she bonds with Falco by fondly fingering old photographs. And, as unsympathetic as I am to the demands of "spoiled multimillionaires" (McKewin's term for striking athletes), the film's promotion of union-busting shook me up a bit--I'm not warm to the idea of a young, dumb and full of come target demographic getting their socio-political discussion from big-studio bilge. (--- For more first-run, DVD, and books-about-movies reviews, plus contests and the proverbial "more!", visit 'Film Freak Central,' @ http://filmfreakcentral.net ---)
-August, 2000
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