Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to movie theaters, even as I’ll have to sacrifice seeing wonders like The Pope’s Exorcist (Julius Avery).
Champions (Bobby Farrelly) rated PG-13 124 min.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: Marcus Marakovich (Woody Harrelson) is an assistant basketball coach for a minor-league-team in Des Moines, IA, who’s bounced around the game for years, desperately wants to get back in the upper atmosphere of the NBA, but sees little hope. His love life’s no better, as the opening scene’s about his latest one-night-stand, Alex (Kaitlin Olson), leaving in a huff the next morning put off by his attitude. At work, it’s miserable because his head coach, Phil Perreti (Ernie Hudson), won’t accept his plan for a final play Marcus is convinced would win a game so Marcus shoves Phil, is ejected from the court, is further disgusted when Phil’s play fails, so Marcus gets drunk, runs into a police car while driving home. He’s arrested, bailed out by Phil (who says Marcus needs to know his players because the guy he insisted should get the ball for a winning shot was too emotionally distraught to shoot properly because of a family crisis; and, by the way, you’ve been fired). Marcus is convicted, then given a choice by Judge Mary Menendez (Alex Castillo): 18 months in jail or 90 days doing community service (he takes the latter) which turns out to be coaching a local Special Olympics team of 10 called the Friends, all of whom have intellectual disabilities. When he shows up the first day not only does he find his players have few skills (one of them, Showtime [Bradley Edens], always shoots with his back to the net, throwing the ball over his head to nowhere useful) but he also gets a rejection from his potentially-best-player, Darius (Joshua Felder), who flatly refuses to play for him (although Johnny [Kevin Iannucci] is warmly-welcoming). Marcus complains about the impossibility of his task to Julio (Cheech Marin), manager of the rec center where they practice, but Julio tells him to bear with it, get to know these guys' lives for much better appreciation.
Then when Marcus accepts Johnny’s invitation for a ride home, he finds the driver of the van is Alex, Johnny’s sister, but they act as if they don’t know each other. Soon, the team is enhanced when Consentino (Madison Tevlin) returns, but she’s got an attitude that puts Marcus to shame. The budget for the team is so tiny they have to take a public bus to an out-of-town-game, then they get thrown off for being too rowdy (including a vomiting incident), so they call Alex who comes in her Shakespeare van to help (plus being an Uber driver, she also does post-lunch mini-scenes of the Bard’s works for middle-schoolers but isn't overjoyed with it; still, with appeals from the team she agrees to be their needed transportation). Johnny becomes more attached to Marcus (who comes up with a tactic to get the kid to finally take a shower as his b.o.’s rank because he’s afraid of water), invites him to dinner with his family, but Marcus blunders when he notes Johnny’s planning on moving into a shared house with some of the Friends; Alex is upset by this as she’s sacrificed much of her life to care for Johnny, so Marcus leaves, only to have an argument outside with Alex where he accuses her of not getting close with a man so that Johnny won’t form any outside attachments.
While she’s been having casual sex with Marcus after those away games, she tells him they’re through, though she keeps up her driving duties for the team. Johnny now pulls away from Marcus, refuses to play until Consentino upbraids him for it, tells him to play for the team, not the coach. Then Phil tells Marcus Darius won’t play for him because his mother was killed by a drunk driver while he got a brain injury, so Marcus talks to Darius, assures him there’s no more drunk driving, welcomes him back to the team. The Friends' play improves, allowing them to go to the North American Regional Finals in Winnipeg, but there’s no budget for such travel and lodging so Marcus and Alex fool Frank O’Connolly (Sean Cullen), owner of a restaurant where Friends player/kitchen worker Benny (James Day Keith) was fired for asking for work-schedule-changes so he could play more games; using a fake story about discrimination-legalities, they get the guy to finance the whole trip, so they’re off to Canada (Champions was shot in Winnipeg [Manitoba, Canada]; sorry Iowa Chamber of Commerce), although the team’s now demoralized because Marcus is offered an assistant coaching job with Seattle’s NBA team (due to his surprising success with the Friends), plus they’re intimidated by larger, better opponents, the Beasts, so they’re behind at halftime; Marcus fires them up with a speech about how they’re already champions because of how they’ve stood up to the rejections they’ve encountered. ⇒This leads to improved play, so in the final seconds they’re down by only 1 point; Marcus has a plan, but new assistant Sonny (Matt Cook) has a better one that calls for getting the ball to Johnny, but when it’s executed Johnny passes to Showtime who does one of his signature moves with the ball almost dropping but bouncing off the basket, the Beasts win. Yet, the Friends are happy, both because they’ve come this far and because Showtime finally hit the rim. Wrapping up, Sonny takes over coaching the Friends, Phil helps Marcus get a coaching job at local Drake U., Marcus and Alex connect, Johnny leaves home to move in with his teammates.⇐
So What? There’s nothing new about the basic premise of this plot—strong resemblance to foundational situation and conclusion of The Bad News Bears (Michael Ritchie, 1976)—with other familiarities to such movies as Hoosiers (David Anspaugh, 1986; there’s even a quick reference to this one in Champions), Major League (David S. Ward, 1989), and The Mighty Ducks (Stephen Herek, 1992)—though Champions’ end isn’t as victory-resounding as these latter examples (it’s a bit more like Rocky [John G. Avildsen, 1976], although boxing’s not a team sport, but the underdog-rises-above-expectations theme’s the same, as it is also, along with the coach’s final decision, in a great baseball movie [based in actuality, as ultimately we find Champions to be], A League of Their Own [Penny Marshall, 1992]), with a stretch to also note vague connections to Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019), which doesn’t deal with sports at all but has a theme of the need for reconsideration of various Lost Toys as still having value despite their previous social disconnections. However, one aspect of Champions does seem unique as these forlorn-athletes are all intellectually-disabled, a situation I haven’t found in other fictional movies about sports-misfits (although you can find some documentaries that address this topic in general, but none I’ve noticed yet focused on sports teams).
The challenge, of course, is to celebrate these kids without pandering to their problems, which I think Champions does quite well, but, then, what do I know about the realities of people such as the Friends? Well, I did have a fun-loving Down syndrome brother-in-law decades ago in my (failed) first marriage, but I saw him infrequently in the few years we were related so I really can’t say I know much about him or anyone somewhat like him. Certainly, it seems director Farrelly and screenwriter Mark RIzzo did their best to be respectful as Farrelly went about a remake of the very-financially-successful, award-winning Spanish film Campeones (Javier Fesser, 2018 [I haven’t seen it just yet, but the CCAL’s supportive: 75% Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews, although no Metacritic score]), based on an actual basketball team in Valencia, created in 1998 within the Sports, Rehabilitation, and Social Association (Aderes) of Burjassot, created for the purpose of giving recognition to people facing intellectual disabilities, a team that won 12 Spanish championships in years from 1999-2014.
(I apologize for this terrible photo, but I had little to choose from this time.)
Farrelly certainly made a sincere attempt at honoring, not romanticizing, his subjects by auditioning hundreds of disabled actors before choosing the 10 who’d comprise the Friends on screen, also working with organizations such as Special Olympics and Best Buddies to be respectful and honest in the portrayals, which Friends Casey Metcalfe and James Day Keith (playing Marlon and Benny) felt was properly conveyed for the screen-product, an attitude shared by lead actor Olson: “Nobody wanted to exploit this genre or exploit people with disabilities. We wanted it to just be a movie about people working together to succeed at something.” Of course, you can’t please all of the people all of the time so certainly there will be naysayers such as Marya E. Gates at RogerEbert.com: “But it has the added cringiness of using its team of Disabled basketball players solely as a method toward this redemption while completely failing to see their humanity. […] lead coach Phil (Ernie Hudson) tells [Marcus] he needs to know the players on a personal level, not just as ballplayers. The same can said for the filmmakers, who need to offer the same grace to the Friends and see their whole humanity.” Another dissenting voice about Champions is Cathy Reay of The Guardian who says “But Champions immediately lost its street cred for me once I understood that the disabled characters exist to a) facilitate Marcus’ transformation into A Good GuyTM and b) act as the film’s feelgood mascots. If proper screen time was spent following their lives, we could have witnessed so much more disabled joy, companionship and the societal barriers they face.” No kudos from them.
As you’ll see below in the OCCU summary in the next section of this review, trying to get positive critical voices toward this movie was a bit of a difficult task, but there are some as with Stephanie Zacharek of TIME: “With Champions, director Bobby Farrelly returns us to the late 1990s, a time when there were fewer sorely needed guidelines, but also fewer gatekeepers just waiting to catch well-meaning people who happen to trip up. […] We’re so busy being progressive—and pointing our fingers at people who, we’ve decided, are not—that we’re stuck in a rut, having lost sight of the fact that to progress means to move forward. Champions, at least, is trying to do just that, keeping the ball moving every minute. That’s harder than it looks—and a lot harder than calling the shots from the sidelines.” Obviously, I'm in harmonious-agreement.
Finally, Katie Walsh in the Los Angeles Times supporting my take on this warm-hearted-movie: “ ‘Champions’ doesn’t break any molds, narratively or aesthetically, and it’s too long, but what sets it apart are the Friends, who offer warm and nuanced performances, and excellent representation for the disabled community, which has either been largely ignored on film or relegated to inappropriate punchlines or condescending stereotypes. […] the actors, offer a depiction of these characters and their lives as full with responsibilities, relationships, and joy. When Coach Marcus comes along, he’s just the icing on the cake. They were champs before he showed up, and the film is his journey to realizing that.” I’m not saying some viewers of Champions won’t find its approach offensive, despite any better intentions by everyone involved, but for me it worked well, built to a simple-yet-uplifting-message, one we could all use more in our constantly-divided-societies so often lauding winners at all costs (or gleefully tearing them down) where acknowledging accomplishments, whatever they may be, in anyone rather than offering ridicule based on some arbitrary standard would help us all be more helpful rather than hurtful. Yes, you’ve seen the foundational concept of this movie frequently before, but what it ultimately tries to encourage is still needed, not antiquated.
Bottom Line Final Comments: As COVID variants continue to rise in my area (and others around the globe), I’m still being very selective about going to a crowded movie theater so even though I’m taking a pass on the enormously-successful Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (James Gunn)—$118.4 million in box-office receipts domestically (U.S., Canada), $289.3 worldwide after just 1 week—I think I’ve seen enough of any version of the Marvel Avengers crew for quite awhile (and know I’ll have access at some point for streaming it on Disney+) so I don’t really see this as much of a loss, nor do I care about Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Kelly Fremon Craig) nor Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World (George Tillman Jr.); besides, I had crucial basketball games to watch as my local (San Francisco area) Golden State Warriors went into the NBA Western Division Semi-Finals against the ballyhooed Los Angeles Lakers, so screen time was limited anyway. As I noted in my previous posting the Warriors began that best 4-of-7-series by losing the first game; now they’re through Game 5 with the Warriors dominant in Game 2, blown out in Game 3, barely lost in Game 4, then tonight before I posted this they had a resounding 15-point-win, sending them back to L.A. on Friday to continue their quest; I’ll know by next posting how that came out (maybe coach Steve Kerr gave them one of those "You're already champions" [like coach Marcus did]), referring to how they've won the NBA Finals 4 of the last 8 years; if so, maybe they can keep this up for 2 more games (and others as the challenge continues), but that's asking a lot of any team in these pressurized-playoffs.
So, with all of this basketball preoccupying much of my time every other night (with a comfortable starting time out here in CA of 7pm at least [I feel sorry for those on the East Coast who are interested in this series, with the endings dragging on past midnight in each game for them]), it seemed only natural that I’d include Champions this week. (I’ve also recently made reference to my local baseballers, the Oakland Athletics, but they continue to play out the early part of the script of Major League, aiming for a new record of losses in a season, now at 8-30—although they finally had a breakthrough last weekend beating the Kansas City Royals [a bit ironic in that the A’s used to be housed in Kansas City, MO, moved to Oakland in 1968, then an expansion team was later assigned to their former Midwest location], the next-worst-team in the majors, for 2 of 3 games, marking both the first series win and a victory by an A’s starting pitcher of the 2023 season, yet I doubt I’ll be mentioning them much again unless some interesting new baseball movie surprisingly comes along.)
OK, back to specifics on Champions: Prior to streaming on Peacock (free to subscribers, which I am because I get cable service from Comcast [owners of NBC TV, Peacock, and who knows what else]; you can also buy it for $19.99 from other platforms), Champions opened in theaters on March 10, 2023 but hasn’t made all that much in grosses—only $16.3 million domestically, $19 million globally (probably that’s all as it’s not even on Box Office Mojo’s latest weekly chart). There certainly hasn’t been much encouragement to see it, with the RT positive reviews at 59%, the MC average score at 50%; thus, I’ll leave it to you if you want to pursue seeing it, even as I think it provides a nice emotional uplift if you do (if nothing else, Woody Harrelson’s usually a pleasure to see, whatever he’s in, while the Friends are a marvelous bunch of effective-screen-presences, especially Cosentino and Johnny, the likes of whom you won’t likely see in many other movies too frequently [if at all]). To close, if you just need to get further into a mood of celebrating a positive, feel-good attitude I’ll leave you with my obvious Musical Metaphor choice of Queen’s “We Are the Champions” (1977 News of the World album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP808MiJUcM, their outstanding live performance from the London version of 1985's Live Aid concert, to benefit starving people in Africa.
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
(1) Disney+ streaming drops 4 million subscribers*; (2) New to Netflix streaming May 2023: (3) New to Amazon Prime Video streaming May 2023; (4) New to Hulu streaming May 2023; (5) New to Disney+ streaming May 2023; and (6) New to HBO/HBO Max streaming May 2023.
*In my previous posting (link in Bottom Line Final Comments above), I noted that one possibility for Disney debuting Peter Pan & Wendy (David Lowrey) on Disney+ rather than in theaters might
be to help boost subscriber numbers for their streaming service; looks like I might have been right.
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