In theaters February 29th 2008

for stupidity mainly.
Run Time: who cares
Matt's rating - nothing

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Review by Matt Mungle

  Let me first say that I am a huge Will Ferrell fan. Like many funny men and women he can say just about anything and it is hilarious to me. But the key is you have to give him something clever to say. There were people in the screening laughing at everything he uttered because it was Will. And I wanted to ask them, are you really listening to the words coming out of his face or are you just laughing because you think you have to? I blame the writers of course. When you have a talent like Ferrell, and a setting like the 1970's basketball era, you have the makings of what could be a slam dunk comedy.

But the brainless, three year olds writing the script decided that instead of penning anything clever they would instead just fill it full of crude, redundant, thoughtless chatter. I can picture them in my mind sitting around a table. They are trying to decide what the character should say next and, coming up with nothing, they decide, "well, let's just have him cuss out his teammates and talk about their sexual preference." Then 5 minutes later they still have no ideas and decide to just copy and paste the same stupid, Neanderthal line they used earlier. It was ridiculous. I was embarrassed for the people in the theater who were laughing. Did they check their brain at the door?

  Let's use Anchorman as an example of what worked. Though it was crude at times it made clever use of the era of 70's broadcasting, clothes, etc, to develop these witty lines and expressions. Sure it was stupid at times, but it worked. There are many lines from that film that I quote all the time. They put some thought behind the stupidity. Here they let stupid run rampant with no adult supervision. My hope is that after the pre-screenings the editors will go into the editing room and revamp some scenes to try and make it some what decent. At the time I am writing this the preview trailer says the rating is pending. The screening I saw, there was no way this would be less than a strong R rating simply due to the unnecessary crude language. These are grown men and they have written a script as if they are 13 years old and trying to curse for the first time. It is such a waste of Will's talent. The couple of scenes that do work, and they are few, are when they are making fun of the era they are portraying and the evolution of basketball. Why even go tot the trouble of creating characters if they are never going to say anything "in character"?

  Anyway, I am done with this film and unfortunately writing all of this didn't work as therapy like I had hoped. I don't feel any better and still want to bury this film and keep everyone I can from seeing it. There are way too many good movies out there to spend your hard earned buck on. So stay as far away from this as you can. If you need a Will Ferrell fix, go rent Blades of Glory or Anchorman. At least those made an attempt at humor and many times succeeded. And Will? He needs to rethink what he is doing before he runs his entire career in the ground. I don't give this film anything. I gave it my time which was more than it deserved.