Champions

Grade: C

It’s been interesting to track the progress of the Farrelly brothers’ careers since they got on the map in the 1990s. Peter and Bobby Farrelly were the directing team that gave us Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, and There’s Something About Mary. In the last few years, they have gone their separate ways for some projects. Peter went on to direct Green Book, an Academy Award Best Picture winner. Bobby has most recently directed Champions, opening in theaters tomorrow.

The movie reunites Farrelly with his Kingpin star Woody Harrelson, who plays Marcus, a minor league assistant basketball coach in perpetually wintry Des Moines, Iowa. After going to a bar to drown his sorrows following a physical tiff he got into with his now former coaching partner (Ernie Hudson), he gets a DUI. He is able to get a lucky deal – 90 days community service coaching a local special needs team. The actors playing the athletes apparently really do have Down Syndrome and other mental disabilities. They are good, even when the hackneyed screenplay does them a disservice, which happens the majority of the time. The one-liners they are reduced to spouting include references to sex acts they like to brag about participating in, or F bombs for shock value.

Johnny is one of the players who quickly warms up to Harrelson’s Coach Marcus. He gets rides home from Johnny’s older sister Alex, who – in a forced coincidence even for the movies – just happens to be a recent one-night stand of his that they enjoyed as a one-and-done before swiping right. One of her side hustles is being a Shakespearian actress for middle-schoolers. That’s appropriate, because some of Shakespeare’s comedies star characters who spend the whole play trading insults and cutting comments, but we just KNOW they’ll fall in love by the end. The same thing happens with Harrelson and Kaitlin Olson (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). The overactive trajectory of their relationship will give you whiplash. At any given time, and sometimes simultaneously, she is his enemy, friend-with-benefits, girlfriend, or wants nothing to do with him. The barbs they exchange feel more mean-spirited than like playful banter. In the final scene, I wondered if they were going to break up and get back together 3 or 4 more times.

Harrelson is a gifted actor, and his work here is appealing and sincere. Unfortunately, the screenplay is predictable and unfunny. I can’t think of a single joke that landed. He frequently tunes into a sports show on TV. It’s apparently the only one in existence, and all they ever talk about is him. We never know which way the wind is blowing with them; they can be shallowly gossiping about Harrelson, or in his corner wishing him the best. Ernie Hudson’s character at least gets to have an arc. Cheech Marin is wasted in his role. Remember the “Build Me Up, Buttercup” singalong at the end of There’s Something About Mary? Bobby Farrelly takes a page out of that same playbook here, with Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping,” in the hopes that it will catch on like it did then. The plot advances automatically, like an unattended machine in a warehouse. The events of the story aren’t motivated; they unfold for absolutely no other reason than they need to. Champions is an empty rickety train ride.

Grade: C