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The Comebacks

Review By: Michael Dance
michaelmdance@gmail.com

Ah, the spoof movie. "The most unreviewable movies are those belonging to the spoof genre," according to Roger Ebert's review of the original Scary Movie. I'm understanding the problem all too soon -- I've already revised this paragraph four times and I haven't even mentioned the title of the movie yet.

The Comebacks, a.k.a. Why Isn't This Just Called 'Sports Movie', is the newest in a line of recent spoof movies like Date Movie and Epic Movie. To give you an idea of my encounters with the genre, I think Airplane! is one of the best films of all time, the Scary Movies were kind of lame, and Not Another Teen Movie got flat-out hilarious after I watched it a few times.

Actually, that's the problem. Broad, stupid comedies play best when you already know the gags, you're on a couch with your friends, and you already have a few beers in you. The line "I'm kind of a big deal" from Anchorman wasn't as funny until the twelfth time you heard a friend say it. So to review The Comebacks fairly, it's almost like I need to accurately predict which jokes will suddenly become hilarious the fifth time you see them.

Eh, screw it. My initial reaction was that The Comebacks actually wasn't all that bad. Most of the jokes weren't that great, but through sheer force of numbers I still found myself chuckling a good amount of the time. A spoof of inspirational sports dramas like Rudy, Radio, and Varsity Blues (and some quite random newer ones like Stick It), it stars familiar face David Koechner as Lambeau "Coach" Fields, the worst coach in the history of the world. In a clever opening sequence, we discover that Coach is actually responsible for every major sports goof of the past few decades - everything from Bill Buckner's infamous error to Zidane's head-butt in soccer. He's like the Forrest Gump of broken dreams.

The plot, of course, follows Coach coming out of retirement to lead a ragtag football team to the championship, along the way playing other teams with names like the Friday Night Lights and the Varsity Blues. On Coach's own team, there's of course the nervous jock (Matthew Lawrence), the Indian girl who never takes off her robes, even when she's playing; and the mentally challenged guy named iPod. Get it? Like Radio, only...iPod. Ho, ho.

Koechner is right at home in these sorts of movies, and does a good job with his earnest redneck idiot routine. (He gets angry at the players because darn it, their grades are way too good.) Carl Weathers also shows up as an old friend and rival coach, and is so good ...