MY MOVIE SHELF: Necessary Roughness

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 185  Days to go: 185

Movie #192:  Necessary Roughness

A football movie next in line on a football Saturday? It’s like kismet. Only I didn’t want to use up all my football mojo before the Big Game, so I had to wait to put Necessary Roughness on. Blissfully, I couldn’t think of better circumstances to watch honestly one of my absolute favorite sports movies.

Welcome to Texas State University, home of the Fighting Armadillos, a fictional college coming off a national championship and facing massive sanctions for illegal payoffs and drug use and boosters. Enter Ed Gennero (the ubiquitous early ’90s presence of Hector Elizondo), a no-nonsense coach intent on fielding an honest team, even with only one returning player (Charlie Banks, played by recent Wipeout contestant Andrew Lauer) and almost everyone playing Ironman (both offense and defense).

Notable roster includes:

Paul Blake (Scott Bakula) at Quarterback. Blake was a high school phenom over fifteen years earlier, but never entered college due to family issues. Can he fit in with these young kids as “the arm of the Armadillos?” Uh, duh. Bakula has always been one of the sexiest older men in the world to me, and I’m sure part of the reason I was so drawn to this movie is because it starred him (Quantum Leap being one of my absolute favorite shows at the time). He’s athletic and musical, can pull off brooding and funny, and he is extremely well put together. Even better, he doesn’t become a college quarterback and take up with some 20-year-old hottie with daddy issues, he falls for his Journalism professor, Suzanne Carter (Harley Jane Kozak), making age-appropriate romance in a silly sports movie truly compelling.

Comedian Sinbad shows up in this — a perfect vehicle for him honestly — as Andre Krimm, a science professor who quit football with a year of eligibility left and joins the team as a defensive leader. “Andre does not eat raw meat, ’cause Andre is a vegetarian,” but he does like to “pa-ar-ar-tay.”

Jason Bateman! Jason Bateman is hilarious, eons before Arrested Development and Horrible Bosses made him an absurdist straight man extraordinaire, as Edison, a pampered playboy rich kid who has cheerleaders do his homework for him but buckles down with Krimm to pass all his exams and maintain eligibility. The greatest offense he can think of is someone punching his quarterback after being bought a beer.

Samoan Peter Tuiasosopo plays center Manumana the Slender, and is basically adorable, as well as honorable and sweet and totally great. Especially with regard to the team’s kicker, women’s soccer star Lucy Draper, played by Kathy Ireland. “She’s got some foot.” “And it keeps getting better on the way up.” Of course, when she’s welcomed to football with a hard hit to the turf, she welcomes the balls of a Kansas Jayhawk linebacker to her foot, so it all works out.

The Texas Penitentiary team shows up for a practice scrimmage, too, populated by, among others, Ed “Too Tall” Jones, Herschel Walker, Tony Dorsett, Dick Butkus, Evander Holyfield, Jerry Rice, and Jim Kelly.

As for non-players, you have Rob Schneider in his best role ever, as Armadillos announcer Chuck Neiderman, and having a WHOLE lot of fun up there in the booth, and making great use of his signature fumbalaya, fumbleruski, etc. schtick. “In a typhoon, it’s anybody’s game!” Then there’s Larry Miller in ridiculously bad cardigans as football hating Dean Elias, being “firm but fair” and creeping on Suzanne. (“It hurts when they poke you in the chest like that.”) But no one tops Robert Loggia as Defensive Coach Rig, who gets all the best lines and plays up his gruff, biting persona to maximum hilarity. Before Rig brings on Blake, he muses that if Gennero is going to “build an offense around a guy who throws like Edward Scissorhands, we’re going to be playing a hell of a lot of defense.” And when Gennero encourages Featherstone (Duane Davis) to keep his eye on the ball, Coach Rig suggests, “And keep your hands on the ball.”

“Holy Columbus Ohio” this is a funny goddamn movie.

As funny as it is, though, what makes Necessary Roughness great — despite it being a kind of standard underdog sports movie — is that they aren’t managing to win an unlikely championship or anything like that. No, they lose every game but one (which they tie) going into the final against the (also fictional) Texas Colts. It’s a messy, ugly end to a messy, ugly season, but Blake makes them a sexy, sexy promise: “We get into that endzone, you’re not going to feel any pain.”

If you need more than that in a sports film, you might just be asking for too much.

MY MOVIE SHELF: The Benchwarmers

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #27: The Benchwarmers

Ever since I started this project, my husband has been cracking himself up over the reality that I would eventually come to this stupid movie of his, and I would be forced to watch it. Well, the joke’s on him. The Benchwarmers is actually not that bad.

I’m not sure if it’s the surreal feeling of seeing Rob Schneider play it straight (i.e., not some lunatic gross weirdo character), my weird affinity for David Spade and Jon Lovitz, or the sheer joy I feel when Craig Kilborn gets what’s coming to him, but this movie made me laugh quite a bit. It’s goofy, yes. And stupid, yes. And it’s by Adam Sandler’s production company, Happy Madison, so it’s teeming with gross and inappropriate jokes. But it’s funny. And it’s got heart — not unlike something akin to The Bad News Bears.

I’m not sure what at the time would make this so forgettable or make so many assume outright that it was terrible. It couldn’t have been marketed well, I’m guessing, though I doubt that was the only cause. Maybe the world was just burned out on Adam Sandler movies — the mere sight of Rob Schneider (especially considering his previous roles) is enough to make me cringe on most occasions, and I’m sure that’s true for lots of people. Not only that, but David Spade in weird hair is a hard sell on any day, and Jon Heder’s breakout film Napoleon Dynamite was kind of polarizing in that some people really got it and loved it, and everybody else just hated it; there wasn’t a middle ground. (He still seems to have that effect, truth be told.)

I was definitely one of the people who looked at the trailers and posters for this movie and thought, “Ugh.” I wanted nothing to do with it, even after it sat on my shelf for the past eight years. However, I’ve been wrong before and, more importantly, I’m willing to admit it when it happens. This isn’t a movie I’m going to watch over and over again, and it isn’t something I’m going to hold up as an example of how movies should be made or revere in my heart as a treasured favorite, but it made me laugh — out loud, several times — and that’s certainly worth something.