By Alexis Katz
GKS Contributor
Want to get yourself pumped up for the playoff games this weekend? Maybe you should watch a movie . . . a FOOTBALL movie. A ton of them exist, and everyone thinks their favorite is the absolute best. The real debate shouldn’t be about which one is best, but rather which one will put you in the right frame of mind for your game. Which one speaks to YOUR inner fan and will help you to be that 12th Man for your team? Any movie will leave you with an emotion, a feeling that can be carried into your festivities on Sunday. So what do you want to feel?
Let’s say you just want to be in a good mood. Being happy and relaxed can help you weather whatever downturns your team might take. You can laugh off some of the disappointments and stay positive. A pure mindless comedy would work best for this, and the best football comedy is The Waterboy. Without any “social skills,” as his mama says, Adam Sandler’s exaggerated Cajun Bobby Boucher is the waterboy for a small, unsuccessful university team in Louisiana. His only concern is keeping the water clean and cold for the players to maintain their proper hydration during practices and games. When one of the players spits into the water, Bobby runs him down and throws him to the ground. The Fonz, Henry Winkler, appears as Coach Klein, who gives Bobby the chance to be part of the football team and go to college. Bobby never loses his bungling socially clumsy self, but he does become a college football star and helps his team win.
As one of his teammates says Bobby is “an inspiration, to all of us who . . . who weren’t born handsome and charming and cool.” Even those that are laughed at can succeed. Who can’t help but stay smiling supporting a guy as helpless as Bobby, who manages to laugh off that criticism and carry his team to victory?
Do you need more out of your comedy? Brett Favre fans might want to see the success of an old guy who had been counted out of football. Here, you’ve got two choices, Necessary Roughness or The Replacements. Both movies have coaches scrambling to field teams in unusual situations. Necessary Roughness is about hodgepodge college team without scholarship players, and The Replacements are scabs for a professional team during a players’ strike. Down-and-out quarterbacks lead both teams. Played by Scott Bakula, a now thirty-something former high school football star who never played in college is the QB for the Fightin’ Armadillos of Texas State University. Having choked in a college bowl game and never truly succeeded in the pros, Keanu Reeves is tapped to lead the walk-ons for the Washington Sentinels.
On and off the field challenges confront the players, but age and natural ability enable these QBs to rise as leaders for their beleaguered teams. Setting examples, they believe in themselves enough to prove that they are just as good, if not better in their hearts and love for the game, than those previously anointed as football stars. Or, Favre fans could just watch Something About Mary, which isn’t about football, but has a cameo by Favre as a love interest for Cameron Diaz’s Mary.
Enough with the light-hearted fare, do you want to just let the violence of the game motivate you into running onto the field to pummel the other team yourself? One of the most vicious football movies is Any Given Sunday directed by Oliver Stone. Always the conspiracy theorist, Stone shows the gritty underbelly of professional football through the fictional Miami Sharks, coached by Tony D’Amato (Al Pacino), and fielded by replacement quarterback Willie Beaman (Jamie Foxx), and featuring actual professional football players Lawrence Taylor and Jim Brown. From the owner to the team doctor to the wife of the veteran injured quarterback, all the characters have ulterior motives, and we are hard pressed to find a “good guy.” The audience sees what goes on in every aspect of the team and its management, and the plot represents the conflict between an “old school” vision of football and its future.
But, it’s not the plot that will get you pumped. It’s the action. In his December 1999 review of the film for the New York Times, Stephen Holder calls the film Oliver Stone’s “viscerally charged, razzle-dazzle ode to professional football as blood sport” and the “home-grown equivalent of a Roman gladiatorial circus.” Any Given Sunday has some of the best football footage in any film and is sure to get even the meekest fan energized for a game.
If you care less about the violence in football and appreciate the sport for its more sentimental spirit of achievement, then you might enjoy a tear-jerker drama. Your team may be the underdog going into the game. Your team may be being dismissed by the national media or, on paper, they don’t have the goods to compete. Then, you need a film to motivate you to believe in the impossible. Rudy, starring Sean Astin as a young man determined to play on the University of Notre Dame football team, is that inspirational film. Rudy doesn’t have the grades, money, size, or athletic ability to play for Notre Dame, but he never relents in achieving his dream. No surprises here as Rudy makes the team through dogged persistence, hard work, and heart. His belief in himself inspires others, including his teammates, to believe in him. His desire drives him, but his confidence sustains him. Many might call the underdog deluded or foolish, but you can’t help but root for him when he works so hard for his goal.
All of these films are about having a dream and the confidence and diligence to achieve that dream. That’s what football is – believing and working – regardless of the ridicule, negativity, or challenges. So tonight, Friday night, Saturday, or Sunday before the game, instead of watching the “talking heads” on sports networks tell you who they think should win, watch one of these films or any other you might find inspirational to fortify your fandom for your team.
