Directed By Charles and Daniel Kinnane

Starring – Kevin James, Jackie Sandler, Taylor Lautner

The Plot – Follows Payton (James) who, two years after a Super Bowl win when he is suspended, goes back to his hometown and finds himself reconnecting with his 12-year-old son (Maxwell Simkins) by coaching his Pop Warner football team. Payton was suspended in 2012 for his role in the team’s Bountygate scandal where bounties were allegedly being paid to players who would try to injure players from the opposing team.

Rated PG for crude material, adult language and some suggestive references.

Home Team | Official Trailer | Netflix – YouTube

POSITIVES

With no shortage of heart and feel-good expression to the delight of the audience, this feels like the exact opposite of a Happy Madison film, and one that everyone involved clearly had the time of their lives in making. This starts with James, who looks nothing like the real Sean Payton, but earns justification for the casting with the dignified class and influence he supplants to the role. It helps that James’ performance doesn’t feel like an impression, but rather an enveloping, channeling’s Sean’s underlining southern accent, various facial mannerisms while coaching, and a cadence in personality, which feels pleasantly unlike any role that Kevin has taken on to this point in his career. Speaking of careers, I found the choice to center this story around Payton’s own 2012 coaching scandal to offer an endearing redemption arc for the protagonist, even if the direction of the unraveling narrative took more than a few liberties with the authenticity of the source material. It supplants forth a father and son conflict at the heart of the story that pushes the material miles beyond the abundance of its familiarity, contrasting the fame and fortune of Payton’s legendary coaching career with the air of sacrifice that serves as a reminder to him, as well as us the audience, to the many loved ones behind every corner who Sean left behind for greener pastures. Adding to this is the consistency in the pacing of the storytelling itself, which with the brief investment of a 91-minute run time not only helps keep urgency in the engagement of the narrative, but also keeps its movements free from plodding, despite the majority of its screenplay being held captive in the redundancy of its inescapable structure. Finally, while nothing experimental or exceptional in immersive rendering, the in-game shot compositions here from cinematographer Seamus Tierney do convey coherence in the consistency of their choreography, and when held in tow with wide angle framing and patient editing, do convey believability in the context of the physicality being asked of the actors, making their sequences stand out from inferior productions that hide weaknesses to accentuate positives.

NEGATIVES

This one nearly crosses the threshold of passing grade returns, but fumbles the execution with various hinderances of production and an overall lack of creativity that keeps it from coming through in the clutch. Most importantly, “Home Team” doesn’t even seem inspired by challenging its screenplay to transcend the tired cliches that have riddled the sports genre to redundancy, even going so far as to embrace them in everything from the enhancing skillset of the players to the predictable patterns of their various wins and losses, to even the coach himself learning the lesson at just the right time to send audiences home happy on a cloud of counterfeit inspiration. If you’ve seen one of these films, you’ve seen them all, granting you the capability to accurately predict the film long before you’ve ever even watched five minutes of it. I also feel like the lack of clarity or insight to Payton’s on-going legal troubles was a huge, missed opportunity for the film, and one that could’ve provided a dramatic layer of uncertainty to a character whose vacation to his hometown feels just that; a vacation, instead of a possible loss of one man’s dream to the top. In addition to this, the influence of the forced humor leads to more than a few cringing instances of juvenile gags that not only diminish the ingenuity and charm of the inspirational aspect of the screenplay, but also limit audience investment to the youths turned on to such shenanigans. One such instance involves the entire team vomiting during a football game, and the entire field covered in puke, giftwrapping us a visual that feels plucked from previous Sandler/Netflix collaborations of the past decade that here only made me groan in how close the film came to not including some unnecessary gross-out moment to garner something, anything memorable. However, not all hiccups lend themselves to creativity, as the film’s blunders inside of technical aspects prove that Happy Madison still have light years to travel before solidifying the big screen experience that has alluded them. Though unnecessary in both context and inclusion, the special effects of an aforementioned scene, as well as some lifeless character materializing during the introduction, looks unconvincing to say the least, made worse by the cartoonish animated hue surrounding its designs that breed obviousness in the artificiality. Likewise, the inconsistencies of the sound mixing, primarily during in-game sequences feels sloppy and disjointed in volume leveling, occasionally allowing the audience to override in frame character dialogue during moments when their proximity should protect audible clarity.

OVERALL

“Home Team” serves as the first notable instance in years of an influential pulse at the Happy Madison studios, and if not for the unnecessary indulgence of juvenile humor, or the surface level screenplay plagued by stale predictability, the inspiration of a feel-good narrative could ensure victory. As it stands, a credible performance from James is held hostage inside of this of this mediocre shell of a product, and one whose greatest contribution will be to the pile it’s added to within the exhausted subgenre.

My Grade: 5/10 or D+