Football. I miss football, okay? Sundays suck now, because I don't have something to watch while I sew. Last night, Sam and I watched Any Given Sunday, which I think I'd seen half of when it came out in the theaters. (Long story short, I ended up leaving without seeing the end due to a power outage.) I was definitely watching it with new eyes last night, and here's a little list of things that I didn't like about the film:
- The uniforms. Especially the uniforms in the last game of the movie. Those Dallas Knights (?) uniforms were terrible. I told Sam that I thought the costume designer for the film was really, really bad, and had no sense of the aesthetics of football, because whoever it was really didn't get anything right. Bad helmets, bad pants, bad jerseys. Bad logos. The only one that sort of worked was the main team's mascot, the shark. The shark head/costume worked. But the uniforms in the film just didn't look like professional football uniforms.
- The editing. I thought that the way the film was edited took it further away from the feel of real football than it did bring it close. Maybe I'm influenced too much by the NFL films and HBO crews (from the sadly defunct "Inside the NFL". RIP. Easily one of my favorite seasonal shows. Too sad. I love Collinsworth, and I know I'll see him elsewhere, but still. Same with Peter King. I really REALLY like Peter King, and I'll still be reading his column, but I'll miss his reports on that show.), but the in the game moments didn't feel right at all. I can't put my finger quite on it, but to my estimation, the film isn't a success if the football doesn't feel real.
- The music. It was very uneven. I'm not saying it was all bad, but I am saying that at times it was very distracting. Football always has seemed like a rock and roll sport to me, the only true rock and roll sport out there. And there was a good amount of rock in this movie. But there was also a lot of Moby (like, what? Moby and football?) and a bit of rap, and it just didn't jibe in my head. There wasn't a score, really, which I thought was nice, but at the same time, I'm just not sure. I don't know how this could have been better, but at the same time, I definitely wasn't happy with it.
- The league. The NFL is so so so omnipresent and so huge that it's really hard to buy this alternate league, with expansion teams in Albuquerque, is making so much money that the only team losing money is in Miami. Really? Considering that the other teams are in huge markets with huge teams (Chicago, NY), I just had a hard time buying it. I'm sure it'd be impossible to make this movie set in the NFL, but then jeez, I don't know if you can succeed in a serious football movie. I'm trying to think of other football movies that I've seen and enjoyed greatly, and honestly, the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Rudy. Yeah, and that's set in college. Realistically. Because it's a mostly true story.
- Al Pacino as head coach. Just bad, I thought. But I did like Dennis Quaid as the seasoned QB.
Would I recommend this movie? Probably not so much. Could have been way better.
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