Certificate: 12A (moderate sex references, discrimination, infrequent strong language). Running Time: 124 mins. UK Distributor: Universal Pictures
WHO’S IN IT?
Woody Harrelson, Kaitlin Olson, Ernie Hudson, Cheech Marin, Matt Cook, Madison Tevlin, Joshua Felder, Kevin Iannucci, Ashton Gunning, Matthew Von Der Ahe, Tom Sinclair, James Day Keith, Alex Hintz, Casey Metcalfe, Bradley Edens, Champ Pederson
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Bobby Farrelly (director), Mark Rizzo (writer), Paul Brooks, Scott Niemeyer and Jeremy Plager (producers), Michael Franti (composer), C. Kim Miles (cinematographer), Julie Garcés (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
A disgraced basketball coach (Harrelson) is tasked with training a learning-impaired team of amateurs…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON CHAMPIONS?
With his brother Peter off making awards-friendly fare like Green Book and The Greatest Beer Run Ever (and deeply splitting online opinion while doing so), director Bobby Farrelly is going solo for the first time with Champions, the American remake of the acclaimed 2019 Spanish film of the same name. However, just from this film alone, it’s clear to see which half of the Farrelly brothers – who together previously brought us such gross-out and somewhat un-PC comedy classics like There’s Something About Mary, Me, Myself and Irene, Shallow Hal and Stuck On You – was the one who pushed for all that outrageousness we remember them for, without quite as much heart as the other.
Of course, tonally speaking, Champions isn’t completely on the same level as those previous Farrelly brothers movies (though it does get very close at times; and yes, I will be talking about those moments later), but it does contain enough traces of them to recognise how identifiable they still are, for better or for worse, even in a movie like this that is never better than just “okay”.
As in the original film, we follow a guy named Marcus (Woody Harrelson, reuniting with his Kingpin co-director Bobby), the assistant coach to a minor-league basketball team who, after a fight with fellow coach Phil (Ernie Hudson), loses his job and eventually gets arrested for drunk-driving. He is later sentenced to community service, wherein he is assigned to coach a team of intellectually-disabled players who, for all of their good intentions, can’t even seem to get the ball through the hoop. At first reluctant to be taking on such a thankless task, Marcus soon ends up forming a genuine bond with his teammates, even scoring a friends-with-benefits relationship with one of their sisters Alex (Kaitlin Olson), and begins getting them into formidable playing spirits as they take on the regional championships, which could give them a spot in the Special Olympics.
From a personal standpoint, and regardless of my overall critical opinion, I do have a great deal of respect for what Champions is setting out to do. I identify as neurologically diverse myself (high-functioning autism, for those interested), and have previously had professional experience with helping others who are less able or with much greater needs for support, so seeing a major American studio film like this prominently feature characters with similar neurological patterns – played, most importantly, by actors who actually do have autism or other conditions like Down’s syndrome; there’s no Dustin Hoffman or Maddie Ziegler kind of situation here, thank the merciful heavens – was extremely heartening for me. It is a very encouraging win for representation in this field, especially when the film treats these characters not as punchlines (though sometimes it comes close) but as actual people, with emotions and personalities and story arcs to spare. The film really livens up the most when it is solely focusing on these characters, and the genuine and heartfelt performances that these actors are giving which really make you root for them in all the ways you’re supposed to. In that regard, Champions is, in its own way, a champion.
However, while the film itself certainly has its heart in the right place, it is continents away from perfect. The script, credited to Mark Rizzo, is conventional to a near-fatal fault, leaning so hard into the classic sports movie formula popularised by the likes of The Mighty Ducks and The Bad News Bears – the one with a young underachieving team who starts to turn around following the introduction of their initially reluctant but later supportive coach – that you can practically predict each and every breath that people are about to take. This would normally be fine if the execution was strong enough to overcome its familiarity, but there’s an odd lack of energy in Bobby Farrelly’s direction, with a lot of scenes feeling as though the director had just come onto set after just two hours of sleep and just let the actors do whatever they wanted to use up the memory card on the camera.
Because there is this rather sleepy tone all throughout, it makes it more apparent that the comedy just isn’t working well enough to carry itself, with nowhere near the comedic timing of previous movies by the Farrelly brothers, nor even the maturity that brother Peter’s more recent solo films displayed. Worse still, Bobby can’t resist the urge to go full Farrelly brothers and engage in gross-out humour that honestly feels very out of place in a film like this, where scenes will end with someone getting projectile vomited on, or with a random stock fart sound in place of an actual joke, which distractingly contrasts with the more heartfelt tone that it is aiming for. Imagine if Peter Farrelly made Green Book as it is today, but then decided to include a scene where Mahershala Ali suddenly and out of nowhere spewed his guts all over Viggo Mortensen, followed immediately by one of its more dramatic scenes; that’s the kind of jarring vibe that Champions unfortunately gives off (though even with this imagined vomit scene from Green Book, I could still see it winning all those Oscars).
So, the whole thing is a very mixed bag. On the one hand, I greatly appreciate its dedication to giving a legitimate platform for learning-impaired performers to stand out on, and in its lighter and more crowd-pleasing moments the movie is pleasant enough to watch. However, because little of that on-screen passion can be found in this direction and script, both of which seem to be on sports movie autopilot, it’s hard for me to recommend Champions as something that deserves to be seen as part of the ongoing conversation about on-screen disability representation.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Champions is a fairly pleasant but overall mixed experience, for while it’s a positive and encouraging step forward for on-screen disability representation, the heavily conventional script, sleepy direction, and out-of-place gross-out humour makes it difficult to fully appreciate as a movie in its own right.
