Director Bobby Farrelly follows in his older brother and frequent co-director’s footsteps with his own uplifting and good-natured solo feature film effort. Like Peter’s Oscar-winning Green Book, Bobby’s Champions unabashedly focuses on the best of humanity and aims to please its audience with its warm-hearted and intentionally simplistic design. Also like Green Book, it’s an easy and vulnerable target that some audiences will pick apart while other audiences will just as easily fall for its abundance of sweetness.
Woody Harrelson stars as a minor-league basketball assistant coach who loses his job due to his passionate and temperamental nature. He drowns his sorrows with alcohol shortly afterward, then gets busted for driving under the influence. The judge gives him two options: he can go to jail or he can do ninety days of community service by coaching a basketball team comprised of mentally handicapped players. Much to his initial chagrin, Harrelson agrees to do the community service. As anyone can surely guess, he finds himself loving the task and his innocently affable team of underdogs.
Needless to say, Champions is an updated variation of The Bad News Bears that features another reluctant, embittered, and flawed main character who finds himself and his true path to happiness in the unlikeliest of places and with the unlikeliest of people. There is not a single story beat that cannot be predicted very early on in the highly formulaic film. I have not seen the Spanish film Campeones on which the film is based, but it’s undeniable that Champions is a wholly American film that features indisputably American values while utilizing a blueprint that an endless list of American movies has already followed.
That being said, it’s quite difficult to not ultimately be won over by the film. The characters are all fresh and well-developed and the film’s presentations of the basketball games are well-choreographed and engrossing—despite the fact that their outcomes can be called long before they’re over. Champions provides proof that formulaic films can still be enjoyable and enlightening if they are well executed and if they don’t forget to add layers of identifiable and honest humanity.
It’s also noteworthy that the film’s humor is mostly harmless and well-timed. Farrelly, who, alongside his brother, previously co-directed and co-wrote such hilarious and edgy-yet-heartful R-rated classics as There’s Something About Mary and Me, Myself & Irene, is no stranger to comedy. There are a couple of his typical gross-out moments that might make the audience cringe, but his humor, this time around, is overall toned down to be less offensive and more family-friendly. There are one or two select moments that slightly cross the line and are patronizing towards and exploitative of the mentally handicapped characters, but it’s mostly clear that Farrelly and his collaborators had the good intention of making a movie that was primarily against such qualities.
The film’s primary positive attribute is its extraordinarily talented ensemble cast that affably brings the characters to sparkling life. Harrelson is, quite simply, at his best. His character’s humorous and emotionally moving arc is wholly lifelike and appears to be effortless. He is one of today’s most engaging and naturalistic talents to grace screens of any size.
Kaitlin Olson is equally effortless and likable as Harrelson’s love interest and the sister of one of his team’s players. Ernie Hudson reminds us that he is severely under-used in a supporting role out of which he makes the absolute most. Kevin Inannucci exhibits sincere and wholly lovable integrity as a key member of Harrelson’s team. Madison Tevlin steals the show as another teammate, successfully, confidently, and magnetically delivering the majority of the film’s most memorable comedic zingers.
Champions is designed to be a feel-good crowd-pleaser and it overall succeeds in its aspirations. The audience I saw it with applauded intermittently throughout and gave it a good cheer when the final credits rolled. It could have been a tad smarter and more original, but such criticisms are merely an afterthought and, surprisingly enough, shouldn’t affect one’s enjoyment while watching it. Champions is a movie about inclusivity and tolerance that wants to make you happy both while you’re watching it and after it’s over. Its innocent and charming nature makes it next to impossible for one not to react to it in the way that it so clearly desires.
GRADE: B+
