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Keanu Reeves heads a team of substitute players in
The Replacements.
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These football heroes are fumblers, stumblers and bumblers. When nervous, they throw up on their own cleats. Their bodies are bruised, and their egos squashed. Only a ragtag leader could rally this defeatist team to unexpected success. Luckily, that's where Keanu Reeves, the most awkward leading man in movies, enters the picture.
In The Replacements a professional football players' strike forces substitutes to finish the season for the Washington Sentinels. Leading the subs is quarterback Shane Falco (Reeves), a college star who saw his pro hopes fade during a disastrous bowl game. Falco and company have been given a challenge. If the Sentinels win three of their last four games, they'll make it to the playoffs for the first time in years. More importantly, some of the subs might earn a post-strike spot on the team.
Replacements director Howard Deutch fashions disgust with pro players' astronomical salaries and debate over taxpayer-funded stadiums into an easygoing sports comedy. The idea of blue-collar Joes taking pro football back from the spoiled players and millionaire owners is a winning fantasy. It's impossible not to laugh at the antics of The Replacements' wannabe football stars.
Gene Hackman stalks the sidelines as grizzled Sentinels coach, Jimmy McGinty. It helps that Hackman is willing to take the film seriously. His relentless blustering provides The Replacements with a burst of reality. McGinty is a substitute like his players. By wearing a natty wardrobe of sweater vests, dress shirts and fedoras, McGinty also pays homage to pro football's past glories.
A likable ensemble surrounds Hackman and Reeves with plenty of good-natured clowns. These "new" Sentinels include a sumo wrestler (Ace Yonamine), an imprisoned felon (Michael Jace), a Welsh soccer kicker (Rhys Ifans), a pair of Rap-star bodyguards (Faizon Love and Michael Taliferro), an out-of-control cop (Jon Favreau) and a fleet-footed receiver who can't hold onto the ball (Orlando Jones).
The Sentinels' substitute cheerleaders are an oddball collection of dancers from a local strip club. It's hilarious how they spank each other on the sidelines. These newfound Sentinels are a misfit collection of cigarette butts, beer cans and dirty briefs.
But the spotlight rests appropriately on Reeves' shoulders. With his blank expression, gruff voice and scatterbrain personality, Reeves makes an appropriate jock as Falco. Ordinarily, Reeves doesn't have the smarts to play a credible action hero. But here, his lanky physique looks believable in a football uniform. Reeves' good nature makes Falco a blue-collar hero in shoulder pads. Reeves also looks like the kind of shaggy-haired guy who lives on a rundown houseboat and scrapes boats for a living. After all, Falco's time in front of a packed stadium is all about second chances.
The sparks fly when Sentinels quarterback Eddie Martel (Brett Cullen) and the other striking Sentinels players confront Falco and his fellow substitutes in the stadium parking lot.
"Hey, Falco!" Martel yells. "You're not even a has-been. You're a never-was."
Screenwriter Vince McKewin (co-writer of the family drama Fly Away Home) makes the most of the underdog sports movie. The Replacements is a welcome member to a comic genre that includes Major League, North Dallas Forty and Slapshot. McKewin keeps the drama lighthearted with a flirtatious romance between Falco and Annabelle Farrell (Brooke Langton), the perky leader of the Sentinels cheerleaders. Being a football fantasy, Annabelle is not only pretty, she's also a football expert and a reliable scout on the opposing teams.
There are moments when The Replacements briefly dissolves into football's funniest outtakes. Players collide with other players. There are on-field mistakes and locker room in-fighting. But McKewin's screenplay pushes the film above the sketch comedy heap by telling a story instead of relying on a string of slapstick gags. By the film's end-of-season climax, you care about the fate of Falco and his rag-tag teammates.
Cinematographer Tak Fujimoto makes a packed stadium and lush football field into something truly cinematic. But Deutch adds little to Fujimoto's photography. There is none of the show-biz flash of Oliver Stone's 1999 football drama, Any Given Sunday. Basically, The Replacements tells its story in economical fashion. Fujimoto's photography aside, the film is a low-budget comedy. Homespun messages from Coach McGinty about leadership, trust, teamwork and playing with heart provide Falco's on-field heroics with an emotional, if somewhat hokey, context.
Like Clint Eastwood's Space Cowboys, The Replacements is an easygoing movie that delivers its laughs with little effort. There is nothing elaborate about the film's mix of a down-to-earth hero, a pretty love interest and likable ensemble characters. The Replacements is a summertime diversion content to relax and have a good time.
As American film's goofiest leading man, a hero who seems too dimwitted to save the day, Reeves makes the most of his gridiron adventure. The Replacements is a predictable comedy, but you're having too much fun to notice.
CityBeat grade: B.
