BEFORE: Headed into Thanksgiving Week, and this is right where I wanted to be - I've got just enough time to watch both Thanksgiving-themed movies before we have to get in the car on Wednesday morning and drive to Massachusetts. But before that, let's get into some Monday Night Football, OK?
Ryan Hansen carries over from "Hit and Run". And if you're saying "Who the heck is Ryan Hansen?", well you're not really wrong. According to my records I've seen him in seven movies now and I just can't remember him in any of them. OK, I kind of remember him from "Bad Santa 2", but there's something just very forgettable about him - is it just me? You may know him from "Fantasy Island" or "Like a Boss" or "CHIPS" or any of a dozen TV shows, or maybe you don't. His character's name in "Hit and Run" changed halfway through the movie and NOBODY NOTICED - or they did and they just didn't care. He was kind of just along for the ride last night. More on this in a bit.
THE PLOT: A 30-something urbanite is pulled back to his rural hometown by his high school buddies on Thanksgiving to finish the Turkey Bowl, an epic football game against their crosstown rivals that was snowed out 15 years before.
AFTER: I'm trying to be nice here, and respect actors and the work they do - but you maybe will recognize Matt Jones here, who's in the "second banana" role, more than you would Ryan Hansen. Jones has been in a bunch of CBS sitcoms, like "Mom" and "Bob Hearts Abishola", and while he may not have as many movie roles as Ryan Hansen, he's at least got a distinctive look. Hansen is just kind of THERE, he's like vanilla ice cream or wood paneling, you may not even notice him, which is bad when he's cast in the lead role in a film. I wanted to like his character, but there's nothing about him that stands out. His character was once a high-school quarterback, and those are like the top dogs in high school, they're power players, typically handsome, super athletic, all the girls want to date them (maybe even some of the guys, too, you know what I'm saying) and I'm just not getting that vibe from Hansen. Maybe it's all the moping around he does in this film, he's never sure of himself, never takes the reins and tries to command the situations he's in, instead he just sort of ducks out of everything and avoids everyone whenever possible, and it's like he's not really living his own life, like his character in "Hit and Run", he's just along for the ride.
This film needed somebody like Vince Vaughn in "Dodgeball", remember that movie? He was the leader of the team, but not in an overpowering way, since it was an ensemble comedy Vaughn let the other actors have their moments and he didn't dominate, but still you knew at every moment that he had top billing in the film. Just like a football team, a film's cast needs a leader that the other players can support. I'm just saying I didn't get that from Hansen, not even at the end during the big game. Hell, the villain character was more dynamic than him, but maybe that's because I recognized the actor as the guy who plays Hawk on "Titans".
But the story required that Patrick Hodges, the guy climbing the corporate ladder, the guy about to get engaged to his girlfriend, the guy whose future father-in-law is about to run for President, somehow has to find his way back to his Oklahoma hometown, when he's been avoiding doing that for the last 10 years or so. Without a quarterback there's no game, and the town's high school's going to forever feel like they've been cursed, because they haven't won a Turkey Bowl since 1992 EXCEPT there's that game from 1999 (?) that was never finished because of a freak snowstorm - and so the players and pretty much everyone in town's been in some kind of cursed limbo, always wondering if that would have been the year that they got revenge on the Noble Knights, who went on to win the State Championship or something. Look, I wasn't into high school sports back in the day, and I'm still not really a football guy - but how can the Badgers and the Knights be "crosstown rivals", were the schools in the same town, or different towns, or what? This is pretty unclear - is there a rich side of Putnam with a private high school and a poorer side with a public one? My hometown had a situation like that, but then why would the Knights walk around saying "We hate Putnam" when they're all Putnam residents? They should clarify that and say "We hate Putnam High", right?
One thing's for sure, the Noble Knights are heavily favored, even if Hodges can come back and be the QB once again. The Badgers are all out of shape, out of practice, and out of their minds - they're a ragtag bunch of has-beens and never-weres, but if you think that they can't put aside their differences, come together, buckle down and maybe pull out a few trick plays to have a chance of winning the game, then you just haven't seen a lot of movies. Films favor the underdogs to an unbelievable degree, after all - we love "Rocky" and "The Bad News Bears" and "The Mighty Ducks" and "Major League" and probably a dozen other sports movies where the statistics favor one opponent, but the screenwriters have other plans.
Hodges has to be tricked into coming back to Oklahoma, instead of spending Thanksgiving with his girlfriend's family in Vail - and then once he's there, his former teammate who's now the town sheriff has to arrest him (and only him) after the big fight outside the bar, so the judge can offer him a reduced sentence of "community service" - namely, playing in the Turkey Bowl. And then he has to keep lying to his girlfriend about needing to stay in town a few more days - meanwhile he's got at least two ex-girlfriends coming on to him, but wouldn't you know it, one's the sister of the rival quarterback, and the other one is DATING the rival quarterback. So this is a complicated situation, beyond all credulity, but hey, at least he gets to re-connect with his parents, who don't seem to understand his new vegetarian lifestyle.
Look, it's a formula, OK? You just KNOW what's going to happen, even though it's going to take a whole two hours to play out. Returning to his hometown is going to make Hodges realize that he's not really the person he's been pretending to be, he's a small-town guy who's got nothing in common with his big-city girlfriend, and maybe he belongs back home, dating a local girl, and being a big fish in a small pond. There's nothing wrong with that, except admitting that you couldn't hack it in the big city. But there are thousands of small towns out there, maybe the secret to happiness is finding the one you belong in, getting off that hamster wheel and just living your life and loving somebody with no pretense. Who can say?
FINALLY, after a whole three days (?) of practice and parades and fist-pumping, it's time for the Big Game. OK, the little game, but it means something to somebody, at least. Again, this is something of a foregone conclusion, because we didn't show up and put up with all this back-and-forth just to see the team we like lose to the team we hate. What if we watched the whole "Karate Kid" movie only to see Daniel-san get his ass kicked? That would be a bummer, right? Or if "Rocky" didn't go the distance? (That's right, kids, Rocky Balboa did NOT beat his opponent in his first movie...he won by losing, or something like that...). Even if the Badgers were to lose here, hey, at least they tried, they came together and they did a thing. We all get so caught up in wins and losses in sports that it's sometimes easy to forget that everybody's trying really hard, and at least they're still getting paid, right?
So it's not the best movie, or even the best football movie - somebody still made this movie, and that's an accomplishment. It got released and it aired on cable despite not having any well-known name actors in it. (Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg and Adam Sandler were all attached to it at one point, and all dropped out.) Take it from me, someone who's been working on independent films for almost 30 years - that's still a WIN for somebody. And it's a win for me because this is a film all about going back to your hometown during Thanksgiving week, seeing your old friends, catching up with your parents and using all that to figure out who you want to be going forward.
The music, however, is just horrible - most of it is period appropriate, songs from the late 1990's like "All Star" by Smash Mouth and "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind - OK maybe "No Rain" by Blind Melon is a good song, but it's all so passé now. And don't we all hate Smash Mouth now? Were they playing this song ironically or just trying to piss everybody off?
Also starring Matt Jones (last seen in "Brightburn"), Alan Ritchson (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire") Kristen Hager (last seen in "Life" (2015)), Da'Vone McDonald (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Tanner Anderson, Travis Nicholson (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Chris Reed, Barry Switzer (last seen in "Any Given Sunday"), Brett Cullen (last seen in "Reminiscence"), John Beasley (last seen in "The Purge: Anarchy"), Leah McKendrick, Blair Bomar, Kevin M. Brennan (last seen in "The To Do List"), Ashley Fink (last seen in "You Again"), Renee Gauthier, Sean McGraw (last seen in "Born of the Fourth of July"), Michelle Little, Burns Burns, Laurie Cummings (last seen in "Wildlife"), with a cameo from Harland Williams (last seen in "Employee of the Month").
RATING: 5 out of 10 yearbook photos
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