The Longest Yard

I have actually never seen this entire movie before. I've seen the majority of the film, but I guess I've never seen the entire movie. The scenes that I did see prior to this viewing, I thought were really funny and it kind of gave me the impression that this was one of the last good funny Adam Sandler movies did. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of really great things in the movie... but there's also a lot to talk about.

The Longest Yard is a remake of the 1974 film of the same name starring Burt Reynolds. And that is the only reason that Burt Reynolds was in this movie. Really, he serves little to no purpose and he looks like he's bored out of his mind. Now that I got that out of the way...

The remake follows the story of Paul Crewe (Sandler) a former NFL player who ends up in prison following a drunken binger involving the always gorgeous Courtney Cox with an incredibly low cut blouse. I know that detail is not totally relevant to the overall story but that's an example of things that this movie decided to focus on instead of good storytelling or letting us get to know Crewe in a way that makes us like him at all, so I'll make mention of it... Courtney Cox looks great in the 5 minute cameo she has.

Crewe goes to a penitentiary in Texas where the Warden wants him to coach the semi-pro football team the guards have set up. Now I'm not totally sure how he goes from being propositioned to being the coach of the guards team to being the coach of a team of convicts in the prison. There was something about how he wanted to set up a game with the guards and the prisoners so the guards could get an easy win, but somehow that turned into a full time coaching position for Crewe and that's really the focus of the movie. Crewe, with the help of a kind inmate named Caretaker (played by Chris Rock) who knows how to get things, starts coaching a rag tag group of hardened inmates who just want to beat the crap out of the guards.

The best parts of this movie, besides the final game obviously, is Adam Sandler trying to recruit convicts from a wide variety of groups. Yeah you've got a lot of stereotypes and let's be real, Sandler is not exactly your go to person when you're trying to not do an offensive stereotype. However, he does get a good group of funny characters and at least with Chris Rock next to him, it doesn't look like Sandler is just a normal white guy in a sea of racial stereotypes.

But the main struggle of the film is Crewe trying to get all these angry convicts to work together and actually make a half-way decent football team. Of course they play dirty but so do the guards and it's a pretty fun romp if you're not thinking about it too hard.

The main appeal of the movie is the physical comedy, and yeah there's a lot of it.

The movie is not really based in any kind of reality as a lot of the hits and tackles in this movie would kill certain people. But the physical stunts used in the film are actually pretty funny and the timing is also really fun. Like a lot of comedies, The Longest Yard is probably funnier if you watch it with a group of people instead just by yourself. But I think you'll still probably enjoy the film for the physical humor.

The part where the movie starts to flounder a bit is in the dialogue and the actual story.

I already mentioned how I'm not totally sure how Crewe goes from being a potential coach for the guard's team and instead becomes the coach for the convict team. At a certain point, I think the movie kind of forgot what the purpose of the game was supposed to be. And if it didn't, the audience definitely does.

But the end of the film, the final game between the convicts and the guards feels like they've been building up to this one game when in reality it's not that important of a game and not even the reason that Crewe was brought in in the first place.

But what's more in this film is that fact that I'm supposed to be rooting for Crewe as he is the hero of the movie. But the truth is, Paul Crewe is an asshole and it's really not until the end of the movie that you actually start to see him change. The majority of the film, he's just got this entitled look about him and there's not really a point in the movie where I didn't really feel like he wasn't just doing this to save his own skin. And because the characters are such hyperboles, you don't really get a sense that Crewe is friends or has much of a connection to these convicts.

The only relationship that gets any kind of genuine development is that of Crewe and Caretaker. I suppose in a way, that's the only one that really mattered. But that's the issue with the movie. It really wants to get to the parts where a bunch of convicts are beating the shit out each other and the guards that it really doesn't focus on any characters development or even introductions.

I know I said the only reason Burt Reynolds is in this movie is so they can have a callback to the original movie that this one was remaking, but he's also a great example of one of the most rushed introductions ever.

Crewe and Caretaker are sitting feeling overwhelmed by the giant task of getting these convicts to work together and then Burt Reynolds comes in like a streak of mustached lightning, says I'm a former Football player, I'm gonna coach the team, and Crewe and Caretaker are like... okay.

And that happens with almost every character. Another example of this is the Warden and all the characters that surround him.

James Cromwell plays your typical corrupt, evil Warden and that's pretty apparent from the beginning. I guess it's something to applaud the movie for, they kind of assume the audience knows the tropes of the evil Warden, his corrupt head of the security (played by William Fitchner) and his crony political advisor, a random guy who is dressed like a plantation owner. It's like they scream, "I'M THE BAD GUY" without saying a word.

But again, the movie doesn't really develop these characters at all, so when dramatic things happen like Fitchner coming to respect Crewe near the end of the film, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. But hey, it's an Adam Sandler movie, what did I expect?

The unfortunate thing is, piecemealing this movie together with the best scenes, assuming that all the character development and story structure was set up prior, I actually thought this was a good movie. I thought that maybe if you take away all creative control from Sandler and just put him in a property that has worked in the past, maybe you can get a halfway decent movie and actually get one of these movies to have a point instead of just being mindless raunchy comedy like all of other Sandler's films.

But as a whole, the movie is not saying anything. It doesn't have anything to say about prison corruption, or really any kind of good triumphing over evil story. They never even question at any point that maybe some of these guys are innocent or that they're actually good guys despite their criminal record. It totally owns the fact that all these guys deserve to be in prison so let's just watch them beat the crap out of one another.

And I'm not saying this movie really needed to have some deep message. That's obviously not Sandler's style. Adam Sandler movies are turn off your brain comedies where you just watch raunchy comedy with people getting hit in the nuts over and over again.

This movie was directed by Peter Segal, the same guy who directed Tommy Boy, 50 First Dates, and Get Smart. While these aren't phenomenal movies, they do manage to tell a story with halfway decent characters you care about while still making you laugh.

What happened here? I don't care about any of these characters, I don't care if they win or lose, and I don't care about why they're in prison.

The only person I slightly cared about was Caretaker and (spoilers) he randomly burns alive in this movie. Yeah, a mindless physical comedic romp with Adam Sandler has a scene where Chris Rock, playing one of the only really likable characters, who about 15 minutes ago was telling us about his wife and kids back on the outside, gets burned alive...

I think there was a version of this movie that had a lot more heart and where something like the death of the heart and soul of the team would actually trigger some emotion and would be a real rallying cry. But as it is, Crewe carries on like Caretaker was never really in the film and Sandler just gives the I don't give a shit style of acting.

There legitimately was a time where I only had seen the last 40 minutes of the film which is basically just the final football game after Chris Rock had burned alive horribly. There was a time I had no idea that Chris Rock was in this film. And to be honest, I never felt like I was missing something. I like Chris Rock in this film, like I said he's one of the only likeable characters. But just watching the last game, you would think that this was just a buddy movie with Sandler and Reynolds. That's a perfect example of how the heart of this film is so minuscule that you don't really recognize that it's gone.

I don't think The Longest Yard is a bad movie. Of all the Adam Sandler movies there are in the world, it actually probably ranks pretty high. But that is saying something about the kinds of movies you're getting when you go into an Adam Sandler movie. When a really forgettable mediocre film like this is one of his better ones, maybe Netflix should stop giving him multiple picture deals.

But those are my thoughts on The Longest Yard. What do you think? Have you seen the original? How does it compare to this one? Comment and Discuss Below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. It's a little bit strange to think how old Burt Reynolds is. It was a big deal earlier this year when he made a rare appearance for the new movie that came out earlier this year, Dog Years. I mean the guy is 81... good for him you know. Enjoy!