Did you know that during the Super Bowl, there is only about twelve or so minutes of actual gameplay? You can guess what makes up the rest of the "event" during the remaining three to four hours.
Trivia aside and just in time for 2022's big February football game is Netflix's "Home Team," a comedic retelling of Sean Payton's suspension for putting bounties on opposing teams last decade. What a meat-headed decision it is to make light of a controversy about intentionally injuring people. All for a sport, what a dumb sport.
Maybe I'm missing the point, perhaps I brought my own personal prejudice against football onto the couch when I pressed "play." Or, maybe oh just maybe, I have a point. But who am I? Nobody; I'm a man who just wasted his Saturday afternoon regretting his Netflix subscription.
Anyway, Kevin James plays Payton, who decides that "hey, if I can't coach in the NFL, I might as well coach little league to reconnect with my son and ex-wife." (They're played by Tait Blum and Jackie Sandler respectively.) It is an awful message, an ugly act of would-be good publicity that glosses over why he's divorced and a bad father and instead just cuts right to them having fun. Oh sure, there's some stilted drama about "taking the game too seriously," but come on! Anyone who has ever seen a sports film about young kids will know every scene the flick has to offer, save for an extended vomit bit who's inclusion does nothing but remind you that Adam Sandler's company "Happy Madison" produced it.
Look, Kevin James is a relatively gifted actor, but he's got nothing to do except stand around while children either play football poorly or play it well. The script by Chris Titone and Keith Blum lacks any emotional stake in the main narrative, wrapping up the "father-son" issues simply by having the father and son share screen time. At one point, his son says he's only there because he was suspended from the NFL. He has a point you know, a point forgotten by the time the disgraced coach is reinstated by the end-credits.
"Home Team" portrays Sean Payton as a really crummy human- it's the best joke here yet I'm not sure the film's in on the joke.
Other examples of crap writing is a supposed running gag about his baby mama's new lover Jamie, played by Rob Schneider, a stereotypical hippie who makes his own soaps, practices meditation, that sort of thing, but there's no punchline. His presence is supposed to be the punchline, and it's that kind of lazy filmmaking that shows how little effort was put here, you know, into what should have been a more serious look into the impact of a man who was involved in literally paying professional football players to hurt other players. What the hell is this!?
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