The Longest Yard - the original, not the remake
I must be getting old. That’s the only excuse I can come up with for why it seems to me like most movies today geared for a wide audience are not worth seeing and are disappointing. This is especially true with remakes of classic originals. Exhibit A: Bad News Bears. Why even try to top the original? Exhibit B: The Longest Yard. I refused to even see the remake and suffer through a disappointment loaded with stupid one-liners and overly dramatic and completely unrealistic football scenes. I just couldn’t bear it.
However, the release of the remake did make me want to see the original, which I recently picked up at my local Blockbuster recently – no, I don’t have Netflix yet –, anxiously ready to see it again after a 5-10 year hiatus.
It’s still a great movie. Not just a great sports movie, but a great movie overall. Caveat: I love the mid-to-late 70s, early 80s comedies like Canonball Run, Smokey and the Bandit, The Bad News Bears, Caddyshack, etc… So, read the following review knowing fully my sense of humor and appreciation of that genre.
The plotline for the movie is a fantastic, and surprisingly believable, premise. Burt Reynolds is Paul Crewe, an ex-NFL quarterback and MVP, who has been out of the game for a couple of years after being caught in a point-shaving scandal. After a fight with his girlfriend, a car chase, and some resisting arrest, Crewe is sent to jail do some hard time. He’s immediately greeted by the hard-nosed head guard, who informs him that they have a semi-pro guard football team that he’s pretty proud of. He warns Crewe to refuse the warden’s request to help coach the team and bring them a championship, and backs up the warning with a few billy-clubs to the stomach and knees. Crewe meets the warden, the warden asks him for help, Crewe refuses, the warden is visibly upset and demands that the sheriff make Crewe’s stay an especially difficult one. This is your basic plot set-up – I’m not ruining anything here by giving you the background.
Cut to the part where Crewe changes his mind and decides to help the warden. He suggests a “tune-up” game against the prisoners, where the guard team can win easily and hone their superb skills before the real season starts. The warden thinks it’s a great idea and tells Crewe that he will coach the prisoner team. Ah-ha! The first real plot twist.
This is where the movie takes off. Reynolds is absolutely likable as the team star and semi-coach, trying to put together a rag-tag bunch of ex-athletes to give the guards a game. Slowly but surely, the team begins to come together, encompassing a mean group of weirdoes, freaks and dangerous criminals that even Howard Stern’s Whack Pack couldn’t rival.
I won’t spoil the full movie by exposing the later/better parts of the plot, but I will say that the movie develops into a great story and has some unexpected turns. Even the eventual game between the guards and prisoners is a little shocking in a few ways, although you’d be a fool to not know the outcome going in.
Upon re-watching, The Longest Yard reminded me just why I loved movies of this era. It’s based on an interesting and original plotline, is fall-off-your-couch hilarious and features a great cast. I highly recommend it to you, especially if you enjoyed some of the movies I mentioned above. I’m sure eventually I’ll catch the remake on cable and will force myself to watch it, but I can’t imagine how it could hold a candle to the original. Its too bad Burt didn’t quit while he was ahead.Read full review
