Champions

A very warm, smaller movie about a group of rag-tag basketball players with various intellectual and physical challenges. By strange luck they get a recent former professional basketball coach who helps them not only learn how to play better but also to have pride in their "championship" accomplishes, even if they never actually win a championship. My favorite was Madison Tevlin as Cosentino, a fiery character that can motivate the guys when needed.

Woody Harrelson is the professional coach, he is very good but gets fired as the movie starts. Seems he is a bit too insistent towards the head coach. Then he unwisely starts to drive home with a few too many beers in him, crashes into a parked police car, and has to go before the lady judge who detests drunk drivers. He will either get 18 months in jail, or do 90 days of community service. Coaching the local basketball team made up of special needs individuals. Easy choice, given the two alternatives.

The first 30 minutes or so are hard to get through, there is a lot of foolishness as the situation and characters are established. In fact my wife abandoned it about 30 minutes in, she said it was too slow. But it picked up right after that and the whole movie turned out to be quite entertaining with good messages.

At home , streaming on Peacock.

It's a remake of Spanish film Campeones (2018), the Americanisation is possibly quite an easy cross over though due to the universal nature of the characters.

Making movies about people that are generally misunderstood can be difficult at the best of times so here the bunch of mentally challenged basketball players has a fine line to tread, one slip and its good message can be lost or maligned, I must admit I didn't think Bobby Farrelly would make such a good job of it.

Woody Harrelson plays Marcus, a minor league basketball coach but following a drunk driving charge he is ordered to do 90 days community service with a 'special' basketball team.

Coaching a misfit bunch of sportsmen isn't exactly new, here the intellectually challenged basketball team with dreams of making the special Olympics brings in a social message that hasn't been explored very much.

Marcus is a single man, a seasoned and good coach for ball skills but his lack of people skills has held him back, understanding his players is more important than ever, each player has his/her own disability, due to Down's Syndrome or brain injury for example, each player also has special abilities and Marcus is the one with learning difficulties of how to connect with them and people in general. With their new coach the 'Friends' basketball team go from strength to strength and make their way up the regional and national championship league, as they all progress, Marcus learns a lot about himself and also falls in love with the sister of one of the team.

The supporting cast add the glue that holds it all together making it heartwarming and a fun journey of discovery for all, the humour works well and didn't seem exploitative, or overly sentimental , it's more feel good than feel sorry, a worthwhile watch.

Champions follows the tried and tested formula for most underdog sports movies, offering a nice reminder of how fun and enjoyable it is to watch a great feel good film that's jokes mostly land and uses it's accessible nature to inform and educate as well as entertain.

After a few years of supporting performances, it's great to see Woody Harrelson back in a lead role, flawed but still likeable and always charming. Kaitlin Olson thankfully isn't wasted and gets plenty of screen time and depth.

However, the films strongest aspect is the friends (and title characters) themselves, always a joy to watch and the film wisely gives them to time to shine on their own a few times, proving they're just as funny and talented.

Robert Farrelly swaps genres just as well as his brother did with 2018's Green Book, balancing the humour and heartfelt moments really well, keeping the film moving at a nice place with a fair few montages and plenty of needle drops (maybe too many) to make it more enjoyable.

Comedy, Drama, Heart Warming. This film ticks all the boxes. Has you laughing, has you cheering, has you annoyed and gets you gripped.

Managed to get to an advance screening of this with my 11 year old boy and we were both unsure of what we was about to watch, was it a comedy, was it an underdog story, was it a drama, was it a sports film and we were both amazed at what was a well spent hour and half. It was all of the above. We laughed, we teared up, we were engrossed in it all. The acting is superb the jokes are both laugh out loud and chuckle to yourself. You love the characters at times you hate them at times and you enjoy the ride.

It's not going to win any Oscars and it's not going to get rave reviews but if you want to escape from the troubles of life and have a damn good time you can't go wrong with seeing this.

Oh, and Woody plays the role perfectly.

As my title states, I am a retired high school SPED teacher and I was also a Special Olympics coach for several years in different sports. When I read an interview with Woody Harrelson about this movie, I was intrigued to see it because I wanted to see how Hollywood would portray these very real people with intellectual disabilities.

While there are certainly and understandably elements of Hollywood in this movie, the realness of the Friends team was very authentic. And all throughout the movie it's the authenticity of the Friends team that makes this such an enjoyable movie. Personally, I thought it was just a bit too long, but that aside, I just kept saying to myself, "Yes, that is exactly what probably would happen in that situation." The absolute clincher of this was at the very end of the championship game and the team's reaction to the final shot. I promise you, that was very realistic. I've seen that play out in my classroom and in the field or court dozens of times. So, I hope many will watch this movie and enjoy these folks for who they really are, warts and all. Isn't that really what we all want?