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The Replacements Customer Reviews (25 - 27 of 38 Reviews)

No Tight Ends Here.
In THE REPLACEMENTS, the professional football league players go on strike to protest unfair wages under the salary cap forcing teams to finish the remaining quarter of the season with replacement players. Jimmy McGinty (Gene Hackman), a former championship coach, is brought in to put together a team for the Washington Sentinels, a team that could have a chance at the playoffs for the first time in over a decade. The team McGinty huddles together includes a Japanese sumo wrestler, two gangsters, a psychotic cop, a Welsh soccer player, and Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves)-a former college star who lost a big bowl championship and was never heard from again. The team struggles to find unity, but eventually find their groove together and along the way Falco falls in love with the team's cheerleading coach.

Ever since THE MATRIX, Reeves has finally been able to shake the "Bill & Ted" goofiness that haunted his acting. He does a fairly believable job in THE REPLACEMENTS and for Keanu Reeves, that's saying a great deal. Gene Hackman is just the ... as McGinty, a coach who has a personality a lot like Mike Martz (of the St. Louis Rams). The film has a wonderful supporting cast including Orlando Jones, Jon Favreau, Rhys Ifans, and Ace Yonamine.

The major drawback of the film is that there isn't much continuity; the movie felt disjointed with scenes not flowing into each other well at all. This lack of continuity was somewhat covered by the awesome rocking soundtrack. However, music should never be the star of a film and when it plays a bigger part than the script, a movie almost always suffers.

I found the film to be more enjoyable than I originally thought it would be and I was impressed by Keanu Reeves. There are a lot better football flicks available, but there are some really bad ones, too. THE REPLACEMENTS doesn't have any tight ends and, therefore, fall inbetween.

In the Red Zone of Hollywood: Touchdown! The Replacements
From The Monitor

Corny dialogue. Mediocre acting. Predictable plot. One great movie.

"The Replacements" is a movie about athletes who forget salary caps and product endorsements (although this feature is chock-full of product placement) and remember football.

"The Replacements" is a light comedy, but nevertheless, like "Any Given Sunday," pushes an agenda. It portrays athletes as money-grubbing crybabies more interested in counting their money than playing. It suggests that heart and love of the game are lost in professional football, but the agenda is equally lost in the humor and excitement of the hard-hitting games.

The Washington Sentinels represent the riffraff-composed Washington Redskins who became a darkhorse team during the 1987 National Football League players' strike. Upon the mid-season strike, the NFL coaches scrambled together a bricolage of players to finish out the season.

Less retired and more fired Coach Jimmy McGinty, played by Gene Hackman (from Mississippi Burning), is rehired to coach the Washington Sentinels, a ragtag and bobtail consisting of has-beens and never-were, one being former Ohio State quarterback Shane "Footsteps" Falco, AKA Keanu Reeves.

This jaded group of players met in discord, but with Coach McGinty's tutelage and Falco's lead-by-example bravado, they soon began working as a team, to ultimately compete in their final showdown against Dallas.

Off the field, Falco is making a 'pass' at Sentinel head cheerleader Annabelle Farrell, played by Brooke Langton. However, Annabelle, with her "I don't date football players...especially quarterbacks" schtick, makes for a tough opponent.

In the end, Farrell, in light of Falco's growing on her like bacteria in a petri dish, discovers that she does indeed date quarterbacks.

"The Replacements" is not an Oscar candidate but it isn't running for one either. It is an upbeat movie that instills faith in quixotical dreams. It adds a little humor, mostly from the mouth of Orlando Jones, who plays Clifford Franklin, as spice for a feelgood entrée.

If you're tired of the sausage of summer action movies perpetually coming from Hollywood's movie meatgrinder, relax, enjoy, and revel in "The Replacements."

Guilty pleasure (3.5 stars)
This movie is so formulaic and predictable it might have been stamped out by a machine. There isn't a single surprise or non-stock character in the production. How many times have we seen the "losers turn to winners on the gridiron/ring/karate studio/etc etc." We get one or two of these type of films a year at least, sometimes more. And yet....this one works. Big time. The cast, which seems to be made up entirely of familiar faces from the top down, delivers (you expect that from Gene Hackman, you don't always expect it from Keanu Reeves), and the chemistry is unusually strong and unforced. The soundtrack fits like a glove and is often hilarious, especially when the ex-stripper cheerleaders are distracting the opposing team or sending the male fans into fits of desire. I'll skip the plot particulars because you already know them (misfits overcome early setbacks in sports and love to triumph to a hard-rockin' theme song) and just leave it at this: some movies you watch once or twice. This is the kind you can watch over and over again and never get tired of it. It may be as original that Van Gogh in my dentist's office, but it's also funny and entertaining. And that is what we all watch movies for in the first place.

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