Underdoggs(2024)

 

Snoop Dogg plays a selfish ex-football star who ends up coaching a kids football team and learning about life.

This is a football version of Bad News Bear mixed with the foul mouthed language of Slap Shot. It's a film whose plot we've largely seen before but with a few unexpected turns. It's a film that is wildly uneven and yet makes you laugh and possibly even shed a tear.

I was amused by the trailers so when I saw that UNDERDOGGS had dropped on Prime I sat down and watched it. My initial thought was it wasn't very good, but that it had some good moments, and then Snoop met the kids and the scattershot set up started to turn into a more solid narrative and I became more invested. The characters became more charming and while I knew, mostly, how it was going to go, I didn't care. I was too busy laughing and smiling.

Actually what sold the film was that while I was sitting and watching it I had the sense that my dad would have loved the film. This was his type of film. Sports and humor, when done well delighted him. Watching the football sequences I could hear him laughing and I could imagine the wide eyed smile that would have been on his face were he still with us. There was a point where I realized that he would have watched the film every time he ran across it.

Is it high art? Of hell no. It's dirty and scrappy like the characters on the screen. It's plot is unremarkable, but it uses the framework to make some valid points about life and not giving up.

While the film is most assuredly R rated for language and coarse talk, the film is actually a really good kids film.  And yes I know even sailors don't drop the F bomb this much - but it is a film aimed at kids because it has a lot to say to them.

I had a grand old time.

You may not like it - but I loved it.