The Comebacks

October 19, 2007 0 By Fans
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The ComebacksStill of Brooke Nevin in The ComebacksStill of David Koechner in The ComebacksStill of Carl Weathers and David Koechner in The ComebacksStill of Brooke Nevin in The ComebacksStill of David Koechner in The Comebacks

Plot

A comedy that spoofs the inspirational sports movies, The Comebacks tells the story of an out-of-luck coach, Lambeau Fields, who takes a rag-tag bunch of college misfits and drives them towards the football championships. In the process, this life-long loser discovers that he is a winner after all by redeeming himself…

Release Year: 2007

Rating: 3.9/10 (7,108 voted)

Critic's Score: 25/100

Director:
Tom Brady

Stars: David Koechner, Robert Ri'chard, Carl Weathers

Storyline
Lambeau Fields lives a middle-class lifestyle in America along with his wife, Barb, and a gorgeous daughter, Michelle, who he has brought up as a son. Lambeau is a failure and has virtually given up on his career as a football coach. Then his friend, Freddie Wiseman, encourages him to re-enter this field, and he does so by re-locating to Plainfolk in Texas and joins the Heartland State University. It is here he will meet some of the most pathetic players, and quite disillusioned he goes about to find new-comers. He finds a kicker in Jasminder Featherfoot, provided of course, he keeps her involvement secret from the rest of her family. Then he finds Lance Truman, whose drag queen dad has brought him up more like a tom-girl. With these additions and others Lambeau sets forth to include his team in the next Super…Er…Toilet Bowl 2 series, and it is here that he will find that Lance fumbles…

Writers: Ed Yeager, Joey Gutierrez

Cast:

David Koechner

Lambeau "Coach" Fields


Carl Weathers

Freddie Wiseman


Melora Hardin

Barb Fields


Matthew Lawrence

Lance Truman


Brooke Nevin

Michelle Fields


Nick Searcy

Mr. Truman


George Back

Buddy Boy


Noureen DeWulf

Jizminder Featherfoot


Jesse Garcia

Jorge Juanson


Jackie Long

Trotter


Robert Ri'chard

Aseel Tare


Martin Spanjers

Randy Randinger


Jermaine Williams

IPod


Finesse Mitchell

Titans Coach


Will Arnett

Mailman

Taglines:
The producers of "Wedding Crashers" spoof the greatest sports movies ever.



Details

Official Website:
The Fox [United States] |

Release Date: 19 October 2007

Filming Locations: California State University – 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton, California, USA

Opening Weekend: $5,554,594
(USA)
(21 October 2007)
(2812 Screens)

Gross: $13,349,251
(USA)
(23 December 2007)



Technical Specs

Runtime:

USA:
 |
Germany:
 |

(unrated version)



Did You Know?

Trivia:

Not screened for critics.

Quotes:

Trotter:
[Buddy Boy is blocking Trottter's locker]
Out of my way, fat ass. You finally decide to block something and it's my locker?

Buddy Boy:
I was just gonna drop off an invitation to my birthday party. FYI, there's going to be a petting zoo.
[whimpers]

Lance Truman:
Nice. Score one for Trotter, which is one more than he had yesterday.
[throws ball at Trotter, who catches it as team oooohhhs]

Trotter:
Look, man, why don't you pretend this thing is a football, and just drop it?
[team ooohhhs louder]

Lance Truman:
Why don't you act like a barbell and get benched?
[team cheers]

Trotter:
Why don't you pretend this whole thing is a basket full of groceries and get sacked?
[…]



User Review

Another sad spoof

Rating: 1/10


I lay the blame for The Comebacks on anyone who enjoyed Date Movie and
Epic Movie. You people encouraged the Fox studio to keep on churning
out desperate parody films, and now we're faced with what just may be
the laziest and most desperate one of them all. The Comebacks barely
qualifies as a parody. Heck, it barely qualifies as a movie. This is a
comedy in theory, but not in execution. No one, not even the people
involved with this mess, could have possibly fooled themselves into
thinking they were making a funny movie. Director Tom Brady (The Hot
Chick) has made something truly wretched here.

The plot, if you can even call it that, centers on a man named Lambeau
Fields (David Koechner). Right when I heard his name within the first
couple seconds of the film, I knew I was in for a long movie. Funny
names are seldom funny, and become even less funny the more you hear
them. Lambeau is one of the worst coaches in the world, but he's been
given another chance by his best friend, Freddie Wiseman (Carl
Weathers), to coach a ragtag high school football team called The
Comebacks. Lambeau must not only lead the team to victory, but also
teach them the ways of inspirational sports movie clichés. He expects
his kids to have poor grades and problems with alcohol, and ridicules
them when they don't. When it looks like the team has a chance to play
at the big championship Toilet Bowl game (Did 10-year-olds write this
script?), Lambeau is shocked to discover that Freddie is the coach of
the big rival team that his team will be playing against. Turns out
Freddie only encouraged Lambeau to take the coaching job, because he
wanted The Comebacks to lose.

The Comebacks is a movie so forced and pathetic, I almost had a hard
time believing what I was watching. Spoof movies have recently turned
into a game of "spot the movie reference", and this continues the
tradition. It tries to squeeze in as many references to other sports
movies as it can, but it either does absolutely nothing with them,
expecting us to just point at the screen and laugh out of familiarity,
or it attempts to be funny and falls flat on its face. Some of the
films referenced include Field of Dreams, Bend it Like Beckham, Rocky
Balboa, Friday Night Lights, Stick It, Radio, Miracle, Remember the
Titans, Gridiron Gang, Invincible, and Dodgeball: A True Underdog
Story. But wait, wasn't Dodgeball already a parody of inspirational
sports movies? So, in other words, we're watching a parody of a parody
of inspirational sports movies. If that makes any sense to you, you're
just the audience this movie is looking for. Some of these films are
referenced in the plot, and some (like the Rocky one) are just thrown
in for no reason, because the filmmakers wanted to try to reference as
many films as possible. There are some that the movie even feels the
need to explain to us in its dialogue, just in case we've missed the
obvious reference. You know a movie is in trouble when it has to spell
out its own jokes to us.

The worst thing is that the screenplay by TV veterans and first time
screen writers, Ed Yeager and Joey Gutierrez, doesn't even know the
first and most important rule of parody – You have to play it straight.
The actors have to pretend they're not in on the joke. The reason why
the classic Zucker Brothers movies like Airplane, Top Secret, and The
Naked Gun are remembered so fondly is because they cast serious actors
like Leslie Nielsen (yes, he was a serious actor before he turned to
comedy) and Robert Stack, and then threw them into ridiculous
situations. What made it funny is that they acted like they weren't in
a comedy, and kept a stone face to the weirdness around them. Those
films wouldn't have worked if they played their roles broadly. The
Comebacks proves this, as all the actors are forced to play their roles
so goofy, it's like they're screaming at us to laugh. David Koechner
keeps on flailing his arms, bulging his eyes, and screaming at the top
of his lungs to the point he looks like someone who knows he's trapped
in a dead-end comedy, and just tries too hard to pretend he's having a
good time. The movie also doesn't understand the art of celebrity
cameos (also an important factor when it comes to parody films). What
kind of cameos do we get in The Comebacks? Andy Dick and Dennis Rodman.

By the time the movie throws in an out of nowhere and extremely
pointless cast musical number to Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" for
absolutely no reason whatsoever, I was just about ready to walk out the
theater door. I was the only person at my screening, and the thought of
this movie going on its pathetic way to a completely empty house kind
of appealed to me. I did sit through the rest of The Comebacks, and I
was not rewarded for my efforts. The sad thing is, Fox is not yet done
killing the spoof genre. They have a parody of 300 coming out next year
called Meet the Spartans. I'd say it can't be much worse than this, but
I've seen the trailer, and I wouldn't want to get your hopes up.