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.
