Worth Mentioning - If You Can't Get Out, Get Even

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.

A hard-hitting classic gets a silly remake.

THE LONGEST YARD (2005)

Adam Sandler takes over the role of Paul Crewe in this remake of the 1974 classic The Longest Yard (and the character is now nicknamed Motley rather than Wrecking), which was directed by Peter Segal (who previously worked with Sandler on Anger Management and 50 First Dates) from a screenplay by Sheldon Turner. Here Crewe is a former football player for the Pittsburgh Steelers who was put on a five year probation after he was indicted for federal racketeering charges for shaving points in a game - an accusation that was never fully proven. As the film begins, Crewe is getting drunk and watching football on TV, shut away in a bedroom while his girlfriend Lena (Courteney Cox) hosts a large party in their house.

When Lena tries to get Crewe to attend her party - and to attend it while dressed in an adult version of a child's sailor costume, even though it's not a costume party - Crewe locks her in a large walk-in closet and goes for a drunken drive in her Bentley, Lynyrd Skynyrd playing on the radio. And how times have changed - in this case, for the better. Burt Reynolds threw a woman to a floor in the original movie, while Adam Sandler simply locks one in a closet that's as big as a living room.

Escaping from the closet, Lena reports her car stolen. When a couple of police officers pull Paul over, he entertains one by mocking the big ears and small stature of his partner. But when the smaller officer makes it clear that he intends to bust Crewe, Crewe takes off, leading the police on a chase that's broadcast on live television. And ends with multi-car crash. Unlike in the original, the chase isn't much of a chase here. The film is more interested in having Crewe joke around with Lena through phone calls and on the news cameras, but the ending smash-up is nice.

As soon as Crewe is arrested, Warden Hazen (James Cromwell) of Allenville prison puts in a call to make sure he'll serve his time there - a prison located deep in the Texas desert. In the original film, Citrus State Prison was the actual Georgia State Prison, while here Allenville is the New Mexico State Penitentiary - and I was surprised to find out it was a real place, because the exterior shots look like Hollywood fakery to me. I was all set to talk about how this prison looked like it was sitting in a cartoon world, then I read that it exists in the real world.

As soon as he arrives at Allenville, Crewe starts getting knocked around by guards. Captain Knauer (William Fichtner) notifies him that the warden wants to see him, and on the way to the warden's office he warns him that the warden is going to ask him to help with the prison guard football team. Crewe seems open to the idea, until Knauer beats him into agreeing to tell the warden "No."

This version of Warden Hazen isn't just a rabid football fan, although he is a fan and has bet on the games - it paid off for him when Crewe shaved those points. But it's been five years since the guard team won the championship, and Hazen feels that if they can win again, with the help of Crewe as associate, it will be good publicity for the campaign he's considering running for governor of Texas. Knauer supports the idea of Crewe helping while in Hazen's office, but Crewe keeps in mind that he needs to refuse this offer.

Hazen intends to make Crewe's stay in the prison unpleasant if he doesn't take the consultant position, and Knauer continues making his stay unpleasant with a nightstick beating. Hazen doesn't give Crewe any kind of work detail, though. Like I said when I wrote about the '74 film, a modern movie wouldn't spend time on something like the swamp reclamation in the original.

Crewe goes to have lunch, where he's mocked as a "superstar" by a fellow named Unger (David Patrick Kelly) and sits across from a very chatty guy called Caretaker (Chris Rock), who warns Crewe that the fellow inmates aren't happy with him for messing with a football game. Caretaker can get the other inmates pretty much anything they want, including McDonald's through his hook-up Cheeseburger Eddy (Terry Crews). Unlike James Hampton's version of the character, this Caretaker can't get Crewe laid with a woman, but maybe with someone from the group of crossdressers like Tracy Morgan's Miss Tucker. The crossdressers didn't show up in the original until game day. The remake gives them quite a bit of screen time before game day, mostly for lame jokes, but it does make sense to establish them as a presence in the prison earlier.

Having been dissed by another inmate, Crewe decides to pick a fight rather than risk becoming someone's bitch. When Knauer reprimands him, Crewe stops him from delivering another nightstick blow. As a result of all this, Crewe is stuck in a hot box for a week. This isn't even Hazen making his life miserable. Crewe quickly brought punishment on himself.

After his stay in the hot box, Crewe has another meeting with Hazen about the football team, during which Hazen reveals that the guards are football players who weren't drafted by the pros. As in the '74 film, some of the guards are played by actual football players. The one I know is Brian Bosworth, star of the 1991 action classic Stone Cold.

Crewe floats the idea of having the guards play a tune up game to build their confidence before the season begins. Hazen takes the idea a step further: Crewe will have four weeks to assemble a team of prisoners the guards can beat in that tune up game. If Crewe doesn't agree to do this, Hazen will make sure he stays in Allenville for longer than the three years of his sentence. So Crewe agrees. That was fast. Maybe too fast. It feels like the movie is speeding along. Crewe has barely met any other inmates at this point, and has only been in the prison for 10 minutes of screen time - most of those minutes having been taken up by chats with Knauer and Hazen.

Some inmates don't trust Crewe enough to go to the tryouts, since he screwed over the Steelers, while others - like Brucie (Nicholas Turturro), a mental case who's carrying on a secret affair with Miss Tucker - jump at the chance to take a free shot at the guards and maybe kill them. There's also the dimwitted Switowski (Bob Sapp), who just wants to learn "how to football," and Big Tony (Joey Diaz), who played some football at Kansas state prison.

The initial tryouts are a bit embarrassing, with inmates either out of shape, inept, or too violent. The recruitment efforts get a boost when Crewe is approached by Nate Scarborough, a Heisman winner from Oklahoma - a character played by Burt Reynolds. I have issues with this film, but the filmmakers did earn some goodwill by bringing Burt Reynolds back.

Scarborough introduces his pal Skitchy (convict turned author/actor Eddie Bunker), who had a chance at parole in 1986 but had twenty extra years added to his sentence after he punched a guard who went on to become warden. Hazen. With Skitchy's help, Crewe is able to access the computer files on the inmates so he can pick the biggest and meanest.

Allenville rates the inmates' violent tendencies on a five star scale, while the most violent at Citrus State were the ones with two stars. Caretaker is embarrassed to find that he only rates half a star.

There's a lengthy sequence focused on Crewe's recruitment efforts, and every time he gets an inmate to join the team there's a scene that shows the new team member in action at practice. Five-Star Torres (Lobo Sebastian) brings violence and a grudge against a guard to the team; Battle (Bill Goldberg) brings size and a grudge against a different guard; towering, selectively mute, mentally off-balance Turley (7'3" Dalip Singh) brings more size and violence. A tackle from Torres knocks Brucie for a loop, a kick in the face from Turley breaks Switowski's nose, much like Shokner broke Samson's nose in the original.

The team has a problem with getting African American inmates, who Caretaker believes the team needs for speed, to join in. Crewe approaches a prominent group of African Americans with a deal - if he can beat one of them, Deacon Moss (Michael Irvin) in a game of basketball, they join the team. Unfortunately, basketball isn't Crewe's game, so he gets decimated. The basketball scene is an example of the remake taking note of a scene's location in the original and building it out into a more elaborate sequence. Crewe met the African Americans at the basketball court in the original, but the setting was irrelevant, he didn't join in on any basketball playing. A basketball sequence wasn't really a necessary addition, but it's fine. I do enjoy comedically violent variations on sports. That's why I'm watching a Longest Yard remake in the first place.

Crewe also plays some ping pong with Turley, but they didn't find a way to make that violent.

Only one of the group, rapper Nelly as Megget, decides to join, impressed by the amount of abuse Crewe can take. And Megget does prove to be a very quick running back.

Desperate to be liked by anyone, even if it's the guards, Unger has been spying on the practice sessions and reporting back to Knauer and his team. When they hear Megget has skills, guards played by Brian Bosworth, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, and Kevin Nash try to intimidate the inmate. Megget handles the situation well, and it was witnessed by some of the African Americans - which inspires them to join the football team after all. And I have to say, this remake is really strange. So much of it is goofy and candy-coated, but then it will try to replicate some more harder-edged scenes from the original. They don't fit in; it feels jarringly out of place to have Steve Austin calling Nelly the N-word in this movie.

Another sport is fit into the movie when Crewe visits Hazen on a golf course (where one of Hazen's fellow golfers is Longest Yard '74's Ed Lauter) to request that Unger be kept away from the practice field. Hazen responds by having the practice field flooded.

The flooding was meant to discourage, but instead it inspires. It makes Crewe want to make sure his team will win the game and make it the greatest ass-kicking fiesta in the history of football. They intensify their preparations, go through medical files to see which guards have had broken bones, arm themselves with brass knuckles, and replace the steroids Guard Englehart (Nash) takes with estrogen pills. Caretaker even sneaks in some good shoes for Megget, hidden inside a cake. It hurts me to see that cake get destroyed just to get to shoes inside it.

One night, Crewe and Caretaker talk over drinks, but not in the same cell like they were in '74, this time in cells that are side-by-side. Caretaker tells Crewe he wants to introduce him to his mom, his biggest fan, then asks why he shaved those points. Crewe's answer is, "I'm innocent."

Caretaker can get film of the guards' past games, but to obtain that film Crewe is going to have to perform a service - he needs to sleep with Hazen's elderly, big-haired secretary (Cloris Leachman), who was a fan of the underwear ads he did back in the day. As you would expect, this scenario is presented in a much more comedic light than when Burt Reynolds had sex with Hazen's secretary thirty-one years earlier. Caretaker even shows the team security camera footage of what Crewe and the secretary did together... And follows that up with footage of Brucie meeting with Miss Tucker.

Unger spies on the team watching the game films and reports to the guards. While he's doing this, Englehart is starting to show the effects of the estrogen pills, going through hot flashes and playing with his sensitive nipples. Stuff like this is why it's so weird when the more down-to-earth moments from the original are mixed into the movie, because everything that's new here is like it's out of a dim-witted cartoon.

Cut to a replication of the most serious and shocking moment from the original, the murder of Caretaker in a fire bombing set up by Unger. The guards wanted Crewe "finished," so Unger set up a bomb in Crewe's cell radio. But Caretaker is the next one to touch the radio, and he's the one who burns to death, with Unger shutting the cell door to make sure no one can help him.

A funeral is held for Caretaker, and then it's game day.

With sharpshooters on the lookout, ESPN2 cameras broadcasting the game live on television, and the crossdressers cheering from the sidelines, the prisoners take the field in uniforms that Caretaker scored for them and which bear the team name Mean Machine. With 38 minutes left in the film (including credits), the game begins. The cons with grudges start off getting in some hard hits on the guards they hate, inflicting pain and not paying any attention to what's going on with the football.

When Switowski hears what sort of language guard Dunham (Steve Austin) used when trying to intimidate Megget, he clotheslines the guard for a new take on the "broke his neck" moment for the original. This time the guard didn't break his neck, the line is, "I think I made him shit himself." You can still kill Caretaker, but you can't break a guard's neck. And of course, everyone knows you shit yourself when you get clotheslined.

Crewe convinces his guys to pay attention to the game, although they do make sure to get revenge on a biased referee along the way. We also see that all the estrogen in his system is making Englehart very emotional... and makes him want to join in with the cheerleaders. Ridiculous.

Mean Machine is ahead at halftime, so Hazen tries to save himself from national embarrassment by blackmailing Crewe - unless he throws the game, Hazen will have him charged as an accessory to Caretaker's murder. Crewe agrees, and asks Hazen to have the guards coast after they have a two touchdown lead.

Hazen tells Knauer something different: after the guards have a three touchdown lead, he wants them to inflict as much pain on the cons as possible. Seeing the Mean Machine guys get pummeled out there and realizing Hazen didn't keep his word, Crewe has to asks Skitchy something: was punching Hazen worth the extra time he has had to serve? Skitchy confirms, it was worth every second.

Crewe returns to the field, determined to lead Mean Machine to victory no matter what the personal cost may be... And to gain the trust of the cons back, Crewe has to admit that he shaved the points in that football game years earlier because he was "in a bad way with worse people," There were no easy answers with Crewe in the '70s, but of course modern Hollywood would have to find the soft center of the character in their movie with big name stars. It's no surprise that they would soften him like this, although it is a surprise that it takes 90 minutes for it to happen.

I used to be a devoted fan of Adam Sandler, I would go to see every movie he starred in at the theatre. That streak lasted almost ten years - and it ended when The Longest Yard was released. I was already a fan of the original movie when it was announced that Sandler would be remaking it, news which annoyed me because I was deeply irritated by the remake boom at that time. Then the trailer was released and I was appalled. How do you remake The Longest Yard and fill it with such idiotic comedy? That was the end for me and Sandler. I didn't see The Longest Yard in the theatre, and have barely seen any of his movies in the theatre (or watched them at all) since. That's not saying much now, since his movies are made for Netflix, but I skipped seeing a lot of them. When I finally gave The Longest Yard a chance, with some distance from the days when remakes would make me angry, I see that it's... fine. That's mainly due to the fact that the original story the film is working from is so entertaining. The new things this creative team brought to their telling of it, the goofy-ass comedy, doesn't really work for me. The story of cons and guards playing football against each other and inflicting pain on each other, that still works.

It's interesting that the movie I was turned away from largely because it was a remake also happens to be the point at which Sandler's style of humor stopped working for me as well. It's been a long time since I rewatched one of his earlier comedies, so I don't know if his jokes got worse or if my taste changed. I also don't really buy Sandler as a hot shot football player. The Waterboy, sure. But not Paul Crewe. Whenever Crewe tries to be tough and capable in this film, it falls flat. It seems completely wrong for him.

This version of The Longest Yard is more harmless than I expected when I was offended by its existence back in 2005, but I don't think it's very good overall. It's fun at times, but mediocre. The original is the only one that really matters to me. This is just a side note that can be easily overlooked. But at least they brought back Burt Reynolds.