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Wednesday, June 1, 2005 | ||
What do you think of this story? | The Longest Yard: Go Directly to JailThe Longest Yard is a prison movie and a football movie. Both the original and the remake starring Adam Sandler and Chris Rock would fall under the heading of Movies for Guys Who Like Movies. There is violence, both fist fights and football related, there is profanity (maybe too much in the remake) and there is the classic story of the underdog upsetting the champs. The original starred Burt Reynolds, who has a number of movies on the Movies for Guys list and Reynolds appears in the remake as the aging con who coaches the team. The story of The Longest Yard for the uninitiated focuses on Paul Crewe (Sandler), a former NFL MVP who was kicked out of the league for allegedly shaving points. Now he is a useless drunk boy toy and when he violates his probation by leading a drunken car chase, he ends up going to jail. A warden in Texas, who has one of the best guard league football teams in the state, pulls some strings to get Crewe in his jail, hoping that he will give advice to his team. Crewe suggests a warm up game and the warden tells Crewe to make a team out of the prison population for the guards to whip up on. What follows is your standard ragtag bunch of guys coming together and getting good for the final game. Is The Longest Yard funny? Well, both versions are funny, though the original focused less on profanity laced humor and had a little more heart. The remake is very funny but I found it a little blue for a PG-13 movie. There was a girl of about 12 sitting in front of me with her parents. I felt embarrassed for her in some scenes but by listening to her at the end of the film I found out that she loved the movie. Im not sure exactly what that says about 12 year old girls or this movie. Sandler gives a good performance as Crewe though he is half the leading man that Reynolds was in the original. In fact, it looked that way size wise as well. Rock had some great moments as Caretaker, although they sounded like they came directly from a stand-up routine. The prison team had some memorable members too with a huge defender named Switowsky and a wannabe quarterback named Brucie (Nick Turturro) getting a lot of the laughs. The football sequences in the remake are far better than the original but thats because movie technology has advanced a lot over the past 30 years. Kudos also goes to the remake for sticking so close to the original screenplay and keeping scenes of the guards brutality, giving the audience a reason to root for a team of convicts. Among the things that bog the film down though were the hip-hop heavy and near constant top 40 soundtrack and the introduction of ESPN 2 and Chris Berman calling the game. I know this is the movies, but that would never happen. It might if there were an ESPN 8 (the ocho) though. So, should you go see The Longest Yard? Yes, why not? It is an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours and if you are a fan of Sandler, Rock and football, youll have a good time and a lot of laughs. Although, if you are just a fan of good films, rent the original which stands up to the test of time and is still a fun romp.
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