The Unseen Movie Review

The Longest Yard

At first glance it’s rather hard to see the point. A relatively faithful remake of the 1974 film of the same name, widely regarded as one of The Dirty Dozen director Robert Aldrich’s finest, even thirty years ago this was by no means an original concept. The idea of prisoners taking on guards in sporting competitions had already been fully explored in innumerable war movies, with Aldrich simply transposing the action to a US jail and making the sport in question the already fairly violent American Football. The finished product, with Burt Reynolds on top charismatic form in the lead, was an entertaining romp with some impressively painful-looking sequences on the pitch.

So why remake it? Well, the presence of two of Hollywood’s most bankable comedians, Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, may well answer that one. After the successes of other male comedian team-ups from the so-called “Frat Pack” of Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn, it seems like a logical step for studios to try out more pairings in an attempted revival of the double act successes of the likes of Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Hope and Crosby or Lewis and Martin.

Sandler’s laid-back style paired with Rock’s trademark quick-fire banter should be a mismatch made in comedy heaven. Add to that the two actors’ large fanbases – Stiller’s alone being worth several tens of guaranteed millions at the boxoffice – and you can easily see where the studio bigwigs were coming from with this one. But sadly, guaranteed bankability doesn’t equal guaranteed quality.

As so often, the remake fails either to live up to the original or sufficiently to alter it for modern tastes. While there may be the rare Thomas Crown Affair where the remake actually manages to compete well with what has gone before, more often we end up with an Italian Job, where any happy memories of the first version are sullied, demeaned and destroyed by the ineptness of what comes after. While this is certainly not as dire as the Italian Job remake, it’s hardly a worthwhile repeat either. About the only thing it manages to improve on over the 1974 film is to tone down the racism a bit.

Stiller’s washed-up American football star, lumped in jail after getting drunk and smashing up his girlfriend’s car, fails to be either as charismatic as Reynolds’ original or – amazingly, considering in the original film the character was also a violent wife-beater – as likable. In fact, he’s a bit of a wimp. Which is hardly what you’d expect of a supposedly tough sports star trying to play of a bunch of convicts against a load of vicious prison guards. Rock, meanwhile, is the same as he ever is – wise-cracking, fast-talking, and increasingly high-pitched and irritating as the film wears on. Although his stand-up routines often work well, on film his persona is frequently too over the top to be bearable.

Despite a good supporting cast, including the always good James Cromwell and generally reliable William Fichtner, as well as – in a nice nod to the original – Reynolds himself, the whole fails quite to gel. The jokes are basic and unoriginal, while the sports scenes fail to be as brutally grunt-inducing as they really should be. If anything, it’s rather like a watered-down Dodgeball. While there are admittedly a few good laughs, this can honestly only really be recommended to the loyal fans of the two stars. Not a disaster, but hardly a worthwhile exercise either. If you want a prisoners versus guards sports flick, stick to Escape to Victory.

posted by Nosemonkey @ 4:25 AM