Movie Previews

The Comebacks – Mark Burns

Inspirational athletics may be ripe for lampoon, but this film can’t land the jokes.

Lambeau Fields (David Koechner; Todd Packer in The Office) is the worst coach in sports history, having never won a game. Consequently, he’s thrown in the headset. Then old assistant Freddie (Carl Weathers, Rocky) finds him at his new gig as stable hand and offers a way out as Heartland State University’s new football coach. After wrestling with his commitment to the family he doesn’t remember, Fields heads to Plainfolk, Texas, to turn around a team of misfits.

The flick directly targets inspirational (and less-than inspirational) sports movies with its slapstick. Among the many riffs on football films are spoofs of Rudy, Radio, Friday Night Lights and The Gridiron Gang. But its aim is broader, using flashbacks and asides to lampoon the likes of Miracle, Bend it Like Beckham, Stick It and even Dodgeball. Inspirational athletics may be ripe for lampoon, but this film can’t land the jokes. Most of its attempts at spoofing source material are contrived of dunderheaded contrarianism (“Your grades are too good to play on my team”). Jokes that would have succeeded better as a cursory surprise are brought to fore and delivered flatly. There is never the slightest hint of subtlety in any joke, and even gags easily gotten are hammered home with dim punchline follow-ups. Crass innuendo, out-of-context drag, random violence, toilet humor and the gratuitously scanty buxom round out this flick’s lowbrow laugh track.

The jokes are stupid, but ultimately, stupidity isn’t the problem. Slapstick aficionados Mel Brooks and David Zucker built careers by embracing idiocy to great comic effect. The problem here is laziness. First, there’s no storyline; instead the character Fields is the slightest connective thread in a string of simple references.

In The Comebacks, director Tom Brady (The Hot Chick) offers filler of little interest. Original material is dim sex jokes and poorly executed running gags. Some jokes approach the dizzying heights of amusing, such as the geriatric Rocky gag (an idea lifted from a background poster in Airplane 2). But you know the movie’s in trouble when a brief coin-toss cameo by Andy Dick makes for one of its brightest moments.

Delivery is a fundamental problem, as well. Earnestly cheesy cop dialogue helped Leslie Nielsen shine in the Naked Gun series. Here the dialogue is utterly bland. This is an especially glaring failure, given the sports world’s supply of florid commentary and flaky phrase.

This is a flick worth avoiding. If you’re curious, just wait. It’ll be on basic cable soon enough.

Poor comedy • PG-13 • 84 mins.

Catch and Release – Jonathan Parker

We’d like a romantic comedy that resembles the way things might happen in real life. To do that, the filmmakers have to do more than have one good idea.

Jennifer Garner stars in the lightweight and wrongheaded romantic comedy Catch and Release. Writer-director Susannah Grant (writer of Erin Brockovich, 28 Days) has a good premise that swims slowly away amidst an empty sea of decent writing.

Gray Wheeler (Garner) is a beautiful bride whose fiancée dies at his own bachelor party. We see Gray at the funeral, which was supposed to be her wedding day (really?!), trying to cope with what’s next. Fortunately for her, that won’t be so hard thanks to two of her fiancée’s goofy friends (Kevin Smith and Sam Jaeger) and another sly but handsome Hollywood type (Timothy Olyphant) — he actually is from Hollywood — who holds a secret about her dead fiancée. (Doesn’t she have any girlfriends?) Mild antics ensue, and Gray manages to land on her feet x in a manner of speaking.

I don’t think we ask for much from our romantic comedies: Something not too heavy, something that will make us chuckle and maybe shed a tear. More than anything, we’d like a romantic comedy that resembles the way things might happen in real life, even in the most ridiculous situations. We want to relate to the emotions on the screen. To do that, the filmmakers have to do more than have one good idea. A little smarts about story development could’ve gone a long way here.

And what is it with Garner’s upper lip? She can barely close her mouth with that thing. She’s beautiful and all, but she’s not a very good actress. Meanwhile, her upper lip looks like it’s been squirted full of whatever Meg Ryan is leaving on the plastic surgeon’s floor. In one kissing scene, it even gets in the way.

Yes, there is a kissing scene (and more) after Gray falls for her dead fiancée’s best friend. Done smartly, we could be quite interested; But smart it’s not, so it’s unforgivable. Sorry to give away part of the plot, but if you see this movie, you’ll have it figured out pretty quickly. Quickly enough that you’ll wish you hadn’t caught this film.