Peter Segal scores a touchdown but fails to gain the point in this remake of the 1974 film that launched Burt Reynolds' career into the stratosphere. Where the original was a brutal film with some black humor, this Adam Sandler vehicle is an immature comedy with some roughhousing. But, as such, it ain't half bad.
Sandler and Reynolds play washed-up quarterback Paul Crewe, tossed out of the NFL for throwing a game. In the original, Reynolds slaps his girlfriend around, steals her Masarati and leads police on a chase while drinking from crystal. Flash-forward about 30 years and we have Sandler locking his girlfriend in a closet, stealing her Bentley and leading police on a chase while guzzling beer from a six-pack. Times have changed but the basic story remains the same.
Crewe winds up in a prison full of tough cons and even tougher guards, all watched over by an evil warden (James Cromwell). The warden has a football team comprised of the guards but they haven't won a title in years. Soon, Crewe is assembling a ragtag team of prisoners who will play the guards in a warm-up match before the season starts, to give the guards confidence.
Crewe runs into all the expected problems in first convincing cons to play ball, and then teaching them the skills of the game, aided in his mission by the prison's wise-cracker, Caretaker (Chris Rock), and another football pro behind bars (Burt Reynolds). All the stereotypes are rolled out: the big, dumb guy; the big, crazy guy; the fat, dumb guy; and the little, crazy guy. They practice hard, even while being spied upon by a snitch—though since they're practicing in the yard under guard towers, a spy hardly seems necessary.
Game day arrives, as does ESPN, alerted to help in the warden's gubernatorial dreams. As it becomes clear that the prisoners' Mean Machine stands a good chance of winning, the warden tells Crewe to throw the game or find himself doing time for the murder of one of Crewe's teammates.
Sandler sells all the gags but is never believable as a former pro athlete, even a quarterback. At least Reynolds had a football career before turning to acting, and he was coming off his role as an uber-tough guy in Deliverance. But Sandler can't seem to shake his goofy doofus persona, neither in Punch-Drunk Love nor here. Rock has a similar problem: You just know any guy like that is going to be someone's bitch and not the man with connections he's cast to be.
But the movie's greatest problem is the compromises that had to be made to produce this story as a comedy; namely, the prisoners and the guards never seem all that bad. Even Indian muscle-man Dalip Singh as the big, crazy guy never really seems all that crazy. And the subtitles that run during his few lines are jarring. We never learn what any of the cons are in for, and apart from a few whacks with a baton, we never see how cruel the guards are.
By keeping the dramatic stakes low enough to allow for easy laughs (and most of the gags are of Sandler's vintage sophomoric style), Segal also prevents us from ever becoming invested in the characters. We want Sandler to win, but only because he's Adam Sandler. We want the warden and guards to lose, but again, only because they're up against Adam Sandler. Segal and Sandler, who co-produced, are so eager to make us laugh no matter what, that a joke is made at the end about an upcoming revenge-torture and murder. Now, there's a play that's simply out of bounds.