Review: ‘Champions’ (2023), starring Woody Harrelson

March 7, 2023

by Carla Hay

Kevin Iannucci, Kaitlin Olson, James Day Keith, Madison Tevlin, Cheech Marin and Woody Harrelson in “Champions” (Photo by Shauna Townley/Focus Features)

“Champions” (2023)

Directed by Bobby Farrelly

Culture Representation: Taking place in the Iowa city of Des Moines and in Winnipeg, Canada, the comedy film “Champions” (a remake of the 2018 Spanish film “Campeones”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A problematic basketball coach, who was recently fired from a minor league team, takes on coaching duties for a group of young adults who aspire to compete in the Special Olympics. 

Culture Audience: “Champions” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Woody Harrelson, director Bobby Farrelly and formulaic comedies that aren’t very funny.

Alex Hintz, Casey Metcalfe, Matthew von der Ahe, Ashton Gunning, Tom Sinclair, Joshua Felder, James Day Keith, Madison Tevlin, Kevin Iannucci and Bradley Edens in “Champions” (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)

The intentions might have been good, but “Champions” is mostly cringeworthy comedy about a grouchy coach and his basketball players, who aspire to compete in the Special Olympics. This misguided movie is an awkward mixture of sappiness, crudeness, bad jokes, and negative stereotypes. To put it bluntly: “Champions” is not a movie that can be considered a worthy showcase for people with various disabilities. Most of the movie is just downright embarrassing for everyone involved.

Directed by Bobby Farrelly and written by Mark Rizzo, “Champions” is yet another “underdog team” sports movie, where the coach (usually middle-aged, usually cynical) is hoping for a personal and professional comeback/redemption by coaching a group of misfits (usually young, usually unruly) who are on a losing streak. “Champions” is a remake of the 2018 Spanish film “Campeones,” and it’s another example of a Hollywood remake that is inferior to the original movie. A remake is supposed to be a chance to improve on the original movie. In that regard, “Champions” is an utter failure.

In “Champions” (which takes place mostly in Des Moines, Iowa), the jaded coach is Marcus Markovich (played by Woody Harrelson), who gets fired from his job as an assistant basketball coach for a minor league team called the Iowa Stallions. Marcus was ousted from the team for instigating a physical altercation during a game with head coach Phil Perretti (played by Ernie Hudson), because Marcus disagreed with a game strategy that Phil wanted. Marcus was also recently arrested for crashing his car into a police car while Marcus was drunk.

In other words, Marcus (who wants to eventually become a National Basketball Association coach) has a bad temper, and he’s a screw-up. In court for the drunken car crash, Judge Mary Menendez (played by Alex Castillo) sentences Marcus to 90 days of community service. As part of his community service, he’s ordered to work at a non-profit community recreation center, which just so happens to have a group of young adults with “intellectual disabilities” who need a coach for their basketball team. In front of the judge—and to the embarrassment of Marcus’ attorney Charlie McGurk (played by Mike Smith)—Marcus calls these disabled people the “r” word.

And so begins the predictable journey of Marcus trying to train this team into going from a losing streak to achieving the goal of competing in the upcoming Special Olympics, which will take place in the Canadian city of Winnipeg. (“Champions” was actually filmed in Winnipeg.) Marcus gets some coaching help from an acquaintance named Sonny (played by Matt Cook), who has NBA connections. This basketball program is overseen by recreation center manager Julio (played by Cheech Marin), who is as reliable and even-tempered as Marcus is unpredictable and a loose cannon. Julio tells Marcus, “They don’t have to be champs. You just have to make them feel like a team.”

The team that Marcus coaches is called the Friends. The team member who gets the most screen time and personal backstory is Johnathan (played by Kevin Iannucci), nicknamed Johnny, who is living with Down syndrome. In the beginning of the movie, Johnny is afraid of taking baths or showers. Guess who’s going to help Johnny overcome this fear? The movie’s jokes and gags about Johnny’s body odor get tiresome very quickly. Johnny works at an animal shelter, so the movie can have some contrived cutesy moments with pet animals.

Also on the team is Benny (played by James Day Keith), who lives on his own and works in a restaurant that’s owned by a jerk named Frank O’Connolly (played by Sean Cullen), who is corrupt and a bigot. Another member of the Friends is Marlon (played by Casey Metcalfe), who is color blind and appears to be an idiot savant, because he rattles off encylopedic trivia and facts about various things. Cody (played by Ashton Gunning), who has multicolored hair, works at a dye factory, is a part-time musician as a guitarist in a rock band, and has to let everyone know repeatedly that he has an active sex life that includes threesomes.

Darius (played by Joshua Felder) doesn’t want to be a part of the team at first, but he eventually changes his mind. Cosentino (played by Madison Tevlin) is the team’s token female. Showtime (played by Bradley Edens) is the team’s tallest member. Craig (played by Matthew von der Ahe) is a welder in a vocational school. The other members of the team are Arthur (played by Alex Hintz) and Blair (played by Tom Sinclair), who are mostly overshadowed by the louder and more extroverted members of the team.

And it wouldn’t be a formulaic movie about a hardened sports coach who finds his soft and sensitive side without the coach having a love interest. In this case, her name is Alex (played by Kaitlin Olson), who is in the movie’s first scene, which shows Alex and Marcus the morning after they had a drunken hookup. Alex (who is sarcastic and sassy) starts off thinking that Marcus is just a meaningless one-night stand. But, of course, their relationship turns out to be something more, especially after it’s revealed how Alex has a personal connection to someone on the Friends team.

“Champions” has some entertaining basketball scenes and good comedic timing from the more experienced cast members. But the movie is a huge letdown in the way that the team members are often written as buffoonish stereotypes. And almost all of the movie’s jokes (for people with or without disabilities) are irredeemably awful. For “Champions,” the real losers are viewers who lost any time or money by watching this messy and very unfunny film.

Focus Features will release “Champions” in U.S. cinemas on March 10, 2023.

Review: ‘Flipped’ (2020), starring Kaitlin Olson and Will Forte

April 16, 2020

by Carla Hay

Will Forte and Kaitlin Olson in “Flipped” (Photo courtesy of Quibi)

“Flipped” (2020)

Directed by Ryan Case

Culture Representation: Taking place in California and Mexico, the satirical comedy “Flipped” has a racially diverse cast (white, Latino and a few African Americans) portraying the middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A husband and wife who aspire to host their own home-renovation show end up being forced to work for members of a Mexican drug cartel.

Culture Audience: “Flipped” will appeal primarily to fans of stars Will Forte and Kaitlin Olson, but the premise of the comedy wears thin about halfway through the story.

Kaitlin Olson and Will Forte in “Flipped” (Photo courtesy of Quibi)

The streaming service Quibi (which launched on April 6, 2020) has set itself apart from its competitors by offering only original content, and each piece of content is 10 minutes or less. Therefore, content that Quibi has labeled a “movie” actually seems more like a limited series, since Quibi will only make the “movie” available in “chapters” that look like episodes. The satirical comedy “Flipped” is one of Quibi’s flagship movies that began streaming on the service on Quibi’s launch date.

“Flipped” takes a concept that’s ripe for parody and wastes it with a dumbed-down crime caper that becomes repetitive and runs out of creative steam long before the story ends. Funny Or Die is one of the production companies for “Flipped,” which was directed by Ryan Case and written by Damon Jones and Steve Mallory. Despite some occasional laugh-out-loud comedic scenes and good efforts from the “Flipped” actors, they’re not enough to make up for the overall mediocrity of the screenwriting.

The married couple at the center of “Flipped” are Cricket Melfi (played by Kaitlin Olson) and Jann Melfi (played by Will Forte), two frequently unemployed, bitter and delusional people who consider themselves to be smarter and better than the “common people” they have to interact with in the real world. Cricket and Jann (who live somewhere in the Los Angeles area) also have a lot of resentment toward people who are more financially successful than they are. Cricket and Jann think that most rich people get financial success through luck or dishonesty, not intelligence or talent.

The irony is that Cricket and Jann have none of the intelligence or talent that they think they have. In the beginning of the story, Cricket has been fired from her job as a sales clerk at a Home Depot-style retail store called Fair & Square. Her supervisor tells Cricket that too many customers have complained about Cricket for being abrasive and rude. Cricket responds to being fired by smashing several store mirrors on the ground.

Around the same time, Jann also gets axed from his job as a theater director of a middle school. Jann wants to stage a school musical called “Children of the Fire,” which is based on a true story of 12-and-13-year-old children who died in a fire in the local area. The musical is obviously a terrible idea, but Jann can’t understand why school officials and parents want him fired over it.

While simmering with anger and self-pity at home, Cricket and Jann (who are having problems paying their bills) commiserate with each other on their living room couch about how they think they’re underappreciated in the world. Cricket says, “Is this our life now? Are we destined to be two people with vision living amongst the blind?” Jann adds, “I think people are intimidated by us because we’re ahead of our time.”

As they’re watching TV together, Jann and Cricket jeer at a home-improvement show called “Pros & Connellys,” starring a cheerful married couple Chazz and Tiffany Connelly (played by real-life married couple Jerry O’Connell and Rebecca Romijn), who do tasteful but bland renovations of middle-class houses. “Pros & Connellys,” which is on a network called HRTV (Home Renovation TV), is “Flipped’s” obvious spoof of the real-life Chip and Joanna Gaines’ “Fixer Upper” show on HGTV.

While watching “Pros & Connellys” with contempt, Jann and Cricket tell themselves that Chazz and Tiffany are mediocre hacks. And lo and behold, there’s an announcement on the show that HRTV is looking to cast a new home-renovation show starring a married couple who could be the next Chazz and Tiffany Connelly. The auditions are open to the public and the winners will get to star in the new show. Jann and Cricket immediately decide that they’re the ones who deserve to win the contest.

With nothing to lose, Jann and Cricket buy a “fixer-upper” desert property for a very low price: $3,400. But there was a catch in the deal: Jann and Cricket bought the property sight unseen. And when they drive out to see the property for the first time, of course it’s a dirty and broken-down dump.

But the delusional Jann and Cricket think the house has a lot of potential for their tacky tastes. As they break down some walls, they come across a shocking discovery hidden in one of the walls: a large pile of cash totaling $500,000. Cricket and Jann can’t believe their luck. Or is it luck if they make the wrong decision on what to do with the money?

Instead of turning the money over to authorities, Jann and Cricket keep the cash and spend it all on redoing the house with trashy and gaudy decorations (including plastic pink flamingoes on the front lawn) and hiring a TV crew to film their HRTV audition video. But, of course, stealing that amount of hidden cash means that whoever owns the cash will eventually come looking for it. And, of course, chances are that whoever hid that cash is probably involved with something illegal.

Sure enough, three members of a Mexican drug cartel show up to retrieve the money, and they menace Jann and Cricket when they find out that the dimwitted couple spent it all. The leader of this trio of enforcers is named Diego (played by Arturo Castro), who reluctantly lets Jann and Cricket talk him into watching their HRTV audition video to get his feedback.

He actually likes what he sees, but Diego and his henchmen still kidnap Jann and Cricket to take them to Mexico and murder them. Just as Jann and Cricket are about to be killed and buried in their already-dug graves, Diego announces that he’s changed his mind. He tells Cricket and Jann that he’ll let them live if they “pay back” the amount of the stolen cash by doing free renovations for his home.

Diego is so pleased with the renovations that he recommends Jann and Cricket for home renovations to other members of the drug cartel. Among these “clients” are Diego’s boss Rumualdo (played by Andy Garcia) and Rumualdo’s  wife Fidelia (played by Eva Longoria), who live in a lavish mansion. And that’s what happens during the most of the story.

How long will Cricket and Jann be stuck in Mexico paying off their debt? And will they be able to submit their HRTV audition video in time? Those questions are answered in “Flipped,” which goes downhill about halfway through the story when the “fish out of water” concept starts to wear very thin. There’s a cringeworthy scene of Rumualdo and Jann singing a cover version of Sonny Curtis’ “Love Is All Around” (also known as the theme to “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”) at the quinceañera of Rumualdo and Fidelia’s daughter.

Castro’s comedic performance as Diego is actually one of the best things about “Flipped,” but he doesn’t get nearly as much screen time as he deserves. Diego comes across as a tough guy, but then he’ll make off-the-cuff remarks that reveal another side to him, such as when he laments that people don’t show enough respect to Pottery Barn.

Forte has made a career out of playing tone-deaf dolts, so there’s nothing really new that he does here as Jann. Olson’s Cricket character (who’s the more dominant and aggressive partner in the marriage) has some standout comedic moments, but she becomes more of a shrieking shrew as the story keeps going.

Garcia and Longoria have characters that are written in a very hollow and generic way, so ultimately their talents are underused in “Flipped.” And some people might be offended that “Flipped” panders to negative stereotypes of Mexicans as drug dealers. (Almost all of the Latino people cast in “Flipped” are criminals or connected in some way to the illegal drug trade.) But regardless of the race or ethnicity of the criminals in the story, “Flipped”  comes across as an idea that should have been a 15-minute skit instead stretched into an 80-minute comedy that wears out its welcome.

Quibi premiered the first three chapters of the 11-chapter “Flipped” on April 6, 2020.

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