Susan Granger’s review of “THE REPLACEMENTS” (Warner Bros.)
So here’s the set-up: It’s late in the season, time for the playoffs, and the Washington Sentinels have just gone on strike because five million dollars a year “really isn’t that much.” The owner (Jack Warden) decides to bring in a retired coach (Gene Hackman) to recruit and train a team of replacement players in exactly one week. And for these guys who never made it to the Big Time for one reason or another, it’s the chance of a lifetime, particularly Shane “Footsteps” Falco, a former quarterback, played Keanu Reeves. “You’re not even a has-been. You’re a never-was,” he’s taunted. Other team members are hilarious Rhys Ifans (“Notting Hill”), as a chain-smoking Welsh soccer player, plus actor/writer/director Jon Favreau, comedian Faizon Love, former pro player Michael “Bear” Taliferro, Orlando Jones, Michael Jace, Troy Winbush, David Denman, and Ace Yonamine, a sumo wrestler. Plus Brooke Langton as the head cheerleader and Reeves’ love interest. “I’ve seen monkeys at the zoo that were more organized than this,” mutters Warden dubiously as the first game begins disastrously. Written by Vince McKewin and directed by Howard Deutch, it was inspired by the 1987 professional football strike but it’s a universally appealing story about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances – like “The Dirty Dozen,” “Slapshot” and “A League of Their Own.” The script’s filled with underdog stereotypes and clichŽs, the team’s colors are the All-American red, white and blue, and a highlight’s a rousing rendition of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” but on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Replacements” is an uplifting, delightful, funny 7. Good family fun – it’s a winning sports comedy about teamwork that should appeal to everyone whose dreams never quite came true.
