The Comebacks DVD Review

Posted by Nick Wallander on 01.29.2008

Everytime someone rents this movie, Jesus kills a puppy...

“The Comebacks” is simply defined as a conglomerate spoof of sports movies. And to be quite honest, that simple explanation basically sums up the movie because this is a movie with very little plot and a whole lot of spoofing. That is pretty much what I would say killed “The Comebacks” before it even had a chance to win us over. I really can’t blame this movie in particular for its downfall because it basically just followed the trend for spoof movies in the past twenty years. They all seem to be a cluster of mockery and movie references that don’t tie together in the slightest. Sure there are always a few gems in the bunch, but at the end of the day a lot of the jokes are just unoriginal filler. That is the problem with spoof movies these days. They try to hard to blatantly rip off another movie to make fun of it rather than just creating situations or characters that exemplify the clichés of these movies. To be honest, the last movie to successfully do such a thing wasn’t even a comedy, but rather a little horror movie named “Scream”. So, I beg you spoof movie writers to give us more subtle, non-direct humor. Less is just more sometimes, you know?

“The Comebacks” stars David Koechner as Coach Lambeau Fields, a man who has failed at coaching nearly every sport, except one: football. Fields is suckered into leaving his job inseminating horses by his old assistant coach Freddie Wiseman (Carl Weathers). Fields takes the bait and moves his wife Barb (Melora Hardin) and rebellious daughter Michelle (Brooke Nevin) along with him to a small Texas town where he will be coaching the Heartland State Comebacks. If you take notice, the team name is a blatant tasteless penis joke that would have been funny if I were still twelve. Fields’ family is not happy about the man of the house coaching again because he tends to neglect them when doing so. This led saucy badass Michelle to get involved with some criminal behavior which led to her joining the US Gymnastics squad by court mandate. It is a plot point that really just existed to spoof a movie and served the main story in no real fashion. That was kind of a trend with this movie.

When Fields gets to Texas we find out that he has a typical rag tag team. He has the mentally challenged water boy, the too good for the team wide receiver, the quarterback with no self esteem, the gentle giant lineman, the girl kicker, as well as the useless nerd amongst other sports movie mockeries. There is no need to say that the team is awful and Fields needs to whip them into shape or else the townspeople will literally kill him. After a tough first loss, Fields gets the team on the winning track. However, the team has a couple major obstacles in their way. One is that there is a love triangle between the butterfingers quarterback (Matthew Lawrence), the hotshot receiver (Jackie Long), and of course the coach’s daughter, Michelle. Add to that the fact that Coach Fields is upset that his players spend time studying and obeying laws and feels that a good team behaves badly. There is no need to explain much more to the limited plot because the rest is basically text book. By the end of the movie we have the obvious build to a meaningful game that comes down to the wire.

It is no secret by this point that I didn’t particularly enjoy this movie. You would think that a movie that stars David Koechner, Melora Hardin, Will Arnett, Carl Weathers, Dax Shepard, Andy Dick, Frank Caliendo, and Kerri Kenney would manage to pack in laugh after laugh. Well, if that were the case you would be dead wrong. However, “The Comebacks” is not without laughs. There are a few in there like I mentioned earlier, but you have to sift through the crap before you find them. Hell, there may have even been too occasions where I did laugh out loud. I will give the movie credit for some great cameos by athletes like Bill Buckner, Michael Irvin, and Dennis Rodman. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, this movie clearly relies on the recognition of other sports movies to find it in any way entertaining. That is great for those of us who have seen any of those movies, but some of us could be left in the dark. That, once again, is a tragic flaw of the spoof movie. If “The Comebacks” would have just spoofed some of the ideas or themes from sports movies rather than blatant scene mimicking, it would have been much better off. To be honest, I got sick of them after a while. I counted at least 23 movies and to me, that is just overkill. Here are the ones I caught:

Seabiscuit, Stick It, Glory Road, Lucas, Varsity Blues, Radio, Invincible, Field of Dreams, Friday Night Lights, Bend it Like Beckham, Coach Carter, Miracle, Dodgeball, Gridiron Gang, The Longest Yard, Rocky, Remember the Titans, The Replacements, Drumline, Blue Crush, Rudy, The Waterboy, and Rocky Balboa.

So, what did I like? Well there was a flashback earlier in the movie with Coach Fields and his daughter after she got As on her report card. This isn’t necessarily the funniest part of the movie, but it made me crack a legitimate smile. Then there was a house party scene where we see a horny LaCrosse team dressed in blue uniforms. That one was almost tasteless. However, my favorite scene of the movie is a touchdown celebration involving a few cheerleaders that even Chad Johnson would envy.

Special Features

The special features on the DVD release of “The Comebacks” are pretty much more entertaining than the movie. For starters there is a cheerleader dance-off in deleted scenes from the movie. Honestly, it is kind of hot and would have added “Bring it On” to the spoof list. Then there is a little video entitled “The Karaoke Kid” where members of the cast try to do a little rap video featuring Jizminder, the team’s girl kicker. This video is hysterical compared to anything in the movie and automatically raises the score I am about to give the DVD by an entire point. Added to the special features are two featurettes containing outtakes by Andy Dick, Dax Shepard, and Will Arnett. Those guys adlibbing is worth watching and gives you insight into just how funny those guys really are.

The 411: Someone commented at the bottom of my column this week that I was a trooper for watching this movie. Well, they were basically right because by the time I was done watching it I was in a stupor. “The Comebacks” is not a good movie. It isn’t even a decent movie. You know something is wrong when the Special Features are the only reason I would suggest anyone picks up this DVD when it hits the 2 for $1 rack at Family Video. Now if you’d excuse me, I need to go buy an advance ticket to see “Meet the Spartans” this weekend….. just kidding. (This one is a 3 without the Special Features)

Final Score:  4.0   [ Poor ]