accessAtlanta

Grade: C

Verdict: The "Major League" of football.

Details: Starring Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman. Rated PG-13 for some crude sexual humor and profanity. 1 hour, 58 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: The pro football comedy "The Replacements" isn't just about scab players. After the fictional Washington Sentinels football team goes on strike, replacements are also hired for the pro cheerleaders. They're strippers.

You can't say Warner Bros. doesn't know how to put butts into movie theater seats.

"The Replacements" has got it all. Bone-crunching plays. Boneheaded comedy (the team kicker, a wire-thin Welsh soccer player, puffs cigs while booting field goals). And a dumb-as-dirt pep squad whose sideline lap-dance cheers cause the opposition to fumble a lot.

After a barroom brawl, the jailed scabs line dance to "I Will Survive." They protect their quarterback by pulling guns and popping a few into the expensive car of the striking pro player who's giving all of them such a hard time.

Come game time, there's commentator John Madden (playing himself), furiously sketching out one of the scab team's ridiculous plays for a TV audience that's beginning to really like this misfit team.

Not since "The Longest Yard" have moviegoers had this much dumb football to cheer about.

And dumb it is.

Keanu Reeves stars as scab quarterback Shane "Footsteps" Falco (yes, it's as dumb a name as you'll find at the movies), a promising player who wound up as a guy who strips barnacles off the boats of the rich. Gene Hackman plays coach Jimmy McGinty, lured out of retirement to lead the scab team. Brooke Langton ("Swingers") plays Falco's love interest.

They're joined by a gang of actors representing all kinds of misfits turned gridiron grunts - from two 2-ton music-industry security guards and one sumo wrestler to an overaggressive convict and a foaming-at-the-mouth cop.

While there's plenty in this movie that's mildly funny, "The Replacements" is nothing more than a high school romp.

The striking pro players strut around in a pack, taunting the scabs like they're all at recess. And while Reeves and Langton do generate a few sparks, their relationship is so coyly staged it never seems believable.

Many moviegoers probably won't mind.

They want to laugh when the soccer player blows cigarette smoke just before he kicks another field goal. They want to howl when that sumo wrestler, who's feasted on eggs before a game, trots out on the field and throws up. And when those strippers turned cheerleaders have a field day, watch out.

— Bob Longino, Cox News Service

[an error occurred while processing this directive]