"Home Team" REVIEW

Hagiography:

1. biography of saints or venerated persons
2. idealizing or idolizing biography

Let's start with what is actually true:

In 2009, Sean Payton coached the New Orleans Saints all the way to the "big game," where they beat the Indianapolis Colts. They were noted for their aggressive style, and that aggression would come back to haunt Sean Payton in subsequent years. An investigation from the league uncovered a scandal that was quickly termed "bountygate." Members of the Saints would be rewarded with bounties for injuring members of opposing teams and removing them from the game. Sean Payton participated in a cover-up. Payton was caught and punished by the league.

For context, consider this other detail from 2009: in the exposé, "Game Brain," Jeanne Marie Laskas explored the connections between football and CTE and the lengths that the NFL went to cover-up the damage their players endure for the sake of the game. This exposé would be adapted into a movie starring Will Smith in 2015. Football is dangerous even under moderate circumstances. Bountygate showed that players were being rewarded for making the game even more dangerous than necessary, and Sean Payton was directly connected to that scandal.

And someone looked at this story and thought that it would be good fodder for a lighthearted comedy starring Kevin James of Paul Blart: Mall Cop fame.

Home Team claims to be based on a true story. After being shown the door (temporarily) by the New Orleans Saints, Sean Payton (Kevin James) became the offensive coordinator for his son's 6th grade football team in Argyle, Texas. The details are where the starts to go off the rails. According to Home Team, Payton was having quirky adventures in a hotel because his ex-wife (the mother of the 6th grade football player) had remarried. In reality, Payton was suspended in April 2012, and he and his wife didn't file for divorce until June 2012.

In Home Team Sean Payton returns to Texas in order to reconnect with his son. It was all about family, you see. That's something of a strange choice for a movie that also decided to omit any references to Sean Payton's oldest child, a daughter. I suppose family is more important than football, but it's easiest to forget about family members who don't play football.

Shall we keep going?

We shall!

Home Team shows the struggle that the Warriors endured in order to claw their way up from being terrible to being respectable. All your favorite cliches are here as Payton tries to whip the team into shape under the watchful eye of Coach Troy (Taylor Lautner). They lose, and they lose, and then... they begin to win? Wow, he really turned them around!

Yeah, that's nonsense too. See, you'd never guess this, but it turns out that having an NFL coach is a bit of an asset for a bunch of 6th graders, so the real life Warriors actually went undefeated until near the end of the season. Who would have guessed that having an NFL-level coach would be an advantage over teams that did not have an NFL-level coach.

This provides the movie with its biggest laughs. None of them are intentional. However, it's objectively quite funny to have frustrated parents acting suspicious of Payton's choices when at the time the movie is set, Payton was a world-famous football coach who was being paid millions of dollars to coach. Yes, I'm sure Payton was getting lots of parking lot critiques from the parents of 6th graders.

Okay, so we know that the movie was full of shit when it said "Based on a True Story" in the opening sequence. But is the movie itself good?

The answer to that is simple: No.

The movie is lazy. It is stupid. It is cliche.

Jokes consist of things like, "This kid is fat, so he orders a pizza during the game." Or "Beth's new husband isn't traditionally masculine." Or "Beth's new husband reads a book at football games." Or "This kid is fat, so he sneaks a pizza into the locker room." Or "Payton's hotel room isn't as luxurious as he would like it to be."

When all else fails, the movie resorts to projectile vomit in slow motion.

Haha?

Only a movie with the quality of Home Team could make one yearn for the days when Kevin James was Paul Blart. For a movie about such a strange episode in football history, it settles for being remarkably cliche. In a different world, one can imagine a particularly dark comedy about exactly this subject matter. What kind of narcissistic asshole do you have to be to attempt something like Bountygate? What kind of a sociopath turns a blind eye to something like that, and how bizarre is it that a jackass like that ended up coaching 6th graders?

But instead of leaning into any of that, Home Team doubles down on cliches. Kevin James as Sean Payton is boring. The football sequences are boring. The movie struggles so hard to make the Warriors the underdogs, as if Sean Payton was just some guy and not a winning NFL coach. Sean Payton isn't an everyman. He's a multi-millionaire.

Sometimes bad movies are entertaining in their own way. Those can be fun. Home Team doesn't provide even that thin layer of entertainment. Home Team sucks on every level.

Home Team's worst crime is sapping all of the interesting material from the story of Sean Payton in order to replace it with cliche, boring nonsense. It is a hagiography of a man who paid to have his football players injure other football players.

Is this a bad movie? Yes.

But is this a terrible movie? Also yes.

But is this one of the worst movies I've seen in years? Still yes.

"Home Team" is available via Netflix, but consider this: your time on this planet is limited. Our lives are short. By choosing not to waste precious hours on "Home Team" you practically extend your life by a few hours.