IvanF's Cut and Paste, No-Name Theatrical Review of
The Longest Yard 2005

- IvanFian written May 31st, 2005 -

"Well... The Longest Yard doesn't exactly make for the longest reviews... or the most stellar reviews, for that matter (except I had a hell of a lot of fun, laughing at Ebert's piss poor joke of one... but that's besides the point...)...

The thing is, The Longest Yard is a sports movie. And as a sports movie, just like with any romantic comedy, you know exactly what you're going to get going into the theatre...

The thing is, I just have a place for sports movies in my heart for some odd reason... Maybe it's because they provide the kind of sweet, loving family that I've been searching for ever since I was a small, potty-trained child?... well, a family outside of my family and friends and relatives, that is...

Or maybe it's just that I'm still bitter that I was always picked last after the white kids, black kids, yellow kids, red kids, white kids again, and even the Chris Rocks when it came to any type of sport?...

Either way, I gotta admit that I enjoyed The Longest Yard... and I was kinda surprised that I was...

I mean, Adam Sandler is usually hit or miss. Movies like Happy Gilmore make me a very happy Madison man... and them he produces films like Mr. Deeds, which just makes me wish I could kill myself, or suicide myself by cop in a prison...

The Longest Yard avoids most of the mistakes Sandler has done in the past... He's natural in his comedy this film, never resorting to pure stupidity like Mr. Deeds was, and yet never getting overly sentimental like Big Daddy suffered from near the end... I mean, you know that Adam is finally back on his game, when he's calling short cops "Frodo", breaking up with bad girlfriends over helicopter cameras, and showing videos of himself "earning" last year's video tapes of the prison guard football team...

I've personally never heard of a prison guard league out there, but it definitely makes sense. Whatever NCAA football players didn't make it to the NFL or any respectable minor league, would surely find it at home beating on poor Adam Sandler's in federal prisons...

And for the most part? I did like the guards in this movie. Although that may have more to do with me still being a WWE Wrestling fan, than it has to do with anything in the movie... Seeing Stone Cold Steve Austin, doing his usual WWE hick promo thing when it came to calling Megget the N-word in the library? I don't know, but that seriously had me laughing the loudest in the entire theatre (although that may be due to the fact, that I was the only one in the entire theatre today)... Seeing Kevin Nash as a 7-foot football monster, going all nipple apeshit after his steroids are replaced by estrogen supplements? Hey, it may be stupid comedy, but there's just something so ridiculously amusing about seeing one of the toughest SOB wrestlers of the past, whooping it up with the gay cheerleaders in the stands...

Now, as a sports movie, the formula for The Longest Yard was obviously nothing to be surprised about... All you have to do, is take a bunch of random misfits with quirky personalities, and whip them into shape with a bunch of montages to the sound of music. The only real diversion in the genre happens at the end, with whether the team wins and celebrates, or comes close to winning and then celebrates... either way, there's gatorade, hatorade, and a bunch of seagulls, but that's about it...

The Longest Yard didn't exactly have the best band of misfits around, but at least it had its fair share of decently memorable ones (completely unlike Kicking and Screaming...)... Megget wasn't really special off the football field. But that library scene with Stone Cold was just absolutely so precious, that I couldn't help but cheer for the N-word as he was dashing his mad ass on the battlefield... Probably the best of the misfits was the McDonald's guy, whatever he was called. Not only was he pure jakked, looking like a real football player (unless he was one). But he made me want to actually eat McDonald's in the theatre with all his witty lines... that's good ol' fashioned subliminal McMessaging for ya... except that it wasn't exactly subliminal, but I digress...

You had your other members of your Motley Crewe... You had the fat guy. The closet gay guy. The soft-hearted man of pure rock and steel... You had the psychotic huge guy back from Happy Gilmore (looking like WWE's Rhyno, might I add)... You had Goldberg, doing absolutely nothing but trying to look huge for the camera, in more ways than one... and I'm sure there were a bunch of other generic guys, who may not have stood out, but still played a damn fine game in the end. And that's all I really ask for in a sports movie...

Yeah, the Motley Crewe as they're called, all get together as one big happy Gilmore family in the end. And thanks to some classic sports tunes played from the past, the final 'bout between the inmates and the guards was actually one hell of a good time to watch... You had huge tackles here, and massive sacks on poor Adam Sandler over there... You had Stone Cold getting back on the WWE injured list yet again. You had Mr. Deuce Bigalow doing his usual cameo thing yet again... You had a lovely ref (Sandler's friend... forget his name right now...) get nailed in the nuts twice... You had nuts being sold in the stands, and guards selling sniper rifles up in towers... All in all, as long as the music was good and the sound effects were loud, how can I really complain about a good ol' fashioned sports movie? It may be simple popcorn fluff, but never once did it get sentimental or boring or some shit like that...

... well... maybe it did, for one moment at least...

The fate of Caretaker (Chris Rock's character) wasn't just pure shit - it was sentimental crap that the film really could've done without...

Thankfully though, Chris Rock was pretty damn good for the rest of the movie, as even the Academy Awards 2005 proved that the comic black guy in charge is tolerable in small doses... He provided most of the humour at the start of the film. And while he did get lost in the shuffle with all the other black guys later on in the film, I still must admit that he had a natural chemistry in this film that just felt, um, natural... He didn't feel like he was forcing his comedy for once...

I didn't care for Burt Reynolds much. It was nice he was included in the film, considering this was a remake of his old 70's film. But it was disappointing how as coach, he did steal the spotlight from Adam Sandler a few times...

James Cromwell was a bit too evil for the pig farmer's own good this movie. Why on earth he was so eager to shoot Paul Crewe in the head at the end of the game, I may never know... But for the most part, I've always liked Cromwell as an actor. He was certainly threatening, whispering in Sandler's ear to throw the game, or else he'll throw away the key to his cell... And c'mon, who here didn't love his partner in crime, Colonel Sanders?... Sandler and Sanders, together again. How the hell could I not enjoy this film then?...

And yes, we finally get to Adam Sandler... who just like Chris Rock, let the comedy just flow in this film... They didn't force any jokes. Every single slip of the tongue just felt natural instead, as subtle reactions, decent camera angles, and appropriate moments of awkward silence made every joke seem to stand out without somehow overshadowing everything else... Take the car chase scene we all know from the trailers, for example. Sandler never goes overboard with his voice or anything. He just subtlely shows the cops all the beers he's been drinking with a smile, calls up his old girlfriend, has a lovely chat, and then smashes her Bentley in three, in a way that just somehow made me laugh... even after watching that scene a dozen times in the trailers alone...

I thought he did a great job as an athlete. Sure, he didn't really look the part, but he played the card of a player earning props to a perfect T... I mean, take the basketball one-on-one game for example. Sure, he lost, but why does that really matter? Street ball is all about respect, and that's what he showed... He never called a foul. He played through every single bad call that he got... He bled and never complained... I mean seriously, except for maybe smashing his head into the metal post, that's how the game is supposed to be played... and you gotta give him props for that...

... and, well... contact sports are good, but it also helps that I'm a huge wrestling fan... which was probably why I liked this film so much, seeing Stone Cold get to throw riot grenades and all... but that's besides the point...

... because I don't know... I guess I'm just a sucker for sports movies... I mean, you know you have a thing for sports, when even I hated Paul Crewe at the beginning...

I don't care much about rapists, or child molesters, or ten year old daughters who fuck their fathers... hell, I'd even pay to watch the latter...

... I'm sort of screwed up that way...

But I just can't stand a sports player, who throws a game on purpose... it just ain't right, you know?...

And if anything?... even if I was half expecting this film to turn into some sentimental bullshit in the end?...

Adam Sandler never threw in the towel... He never threw the game. And he never threw the movie...

From some of the reviewers out there, I had expected The Longest Yard to be the longest damn yawn...

But in the end? It was just a solid, entertaining film from start to finish...

Just like a real game...

... well, a good game, I mean...

... not one of those fixed ones that play all the time in the NFL and NBA, but I digress..."

Film Design - 7.0
Enjoyment Factor - 7.0

Overall (not an average) - 7.0
(1.5 out of 4 stars)