So formulaic I could have written it: Champions reviewed

Champions is an underdog sports movie starring Woody Harrelson as a baseball coach forced to take on a team with intellectual disabilities. But the main thing you need to know is it is so formulaic I could have written it, you could have written it, it could have written itself. Heck, it’s so predictable it could have also directed itself – though, hopefully, it would never have been able to trash itself or I’d be out of a job.

This is so formulaic I could have written it, you could have written it, it could have written itself

Billed as a ‘hilarious and heart-warming comedy’, this is a remake of a Spanish film (Campeones, 2018). As it was Spain’s biggest box-office hit that year, I was hopeful it would offer something above and beyond, or at least something half-decent. Now I’ll never trust the Spanish again. The film is directed by Bobby Farrelly who, with his brother, Peter, has made several successful comedies – Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something about Mary. The stupidity of these films – which one could forgive because, to be fair, they were quite funny – is carried into this film, which doesn’t sit right at all.

Harrelson plays Marcus, an assistant coach for a minor-league baseball team who is arrogant and hot-headed and is fired when he has a disagreement with the head coach, whom he assaults. Having drowned his sorrows in a bar, he’s done for drink driving and when he appears in court the judge offers him two options: jail for 18 months, or coach a baseball team whose members have developmental challenges. Pick your poison! (He’d have to do three months with the team, so three months of that equals 18 months in prison? What were those who work with these people all the time facing? Life?)

Marcus definitely wants to avoid prison but it’s a tough one.