‘Champions’: New Woody Harrelson Movie Takes Warm and Fuzzy to an Intolerable Level

From There’s Something About Mary and Me, Myself & Irene to Stuck on You and The Ringer, the Farrelly Brothers have spent most of their careers populating their films with physically and/or mentally handicapped individuals who serve as vehicles for outrageous—if also oh-so-sweet—humor.

While Peter Farrelly has recently moved on to more “prestige” projects such as the Best Picture-winning Green Book and The Greatest Beer Run Ever, Bobby has chosen to remain in his tried-and-true lane with Champions, a remake of a 2018 Spanish film that tells the inspired-by-actual-events story of a disgraced basketball coach forced to train a squad of intellectually disabled players. Offsetting its naughtier impulses with feel-good schmaltz, it employs a tired formula to losing results.

The nicest thing one can say about Champions is that it isn’t interested in cruel mockery. Unfortunately, in working overtime to be sensitive, it treats its characters as adorable cartoons who exhibit unlikely quirks and make wiseass jokes—a tack that falls a good bit short of being progressive and complicates its otherwise heart-on-its-sleeve compassion.

Between players bragging about sex, singing along to Chumbawamba during impromptu carpool karaoke sessions, and talking about their celebratory on-the-court moves (“big balls” is their favorite, naturally), the entire affair exudes cheery self-congratulatory virtuousness but comes across as eye-rollingly reductive.

Directed by Farrelly with the same bland, primary colored flatness that he and his sibling brought to their prior movies, Champions is a variation on The Bad News Bears, Role Models and other tales about louts who find redemption and purpose by mentoring youngsters. The creep in question is Marcus (Woody Harrelson), an Iowa G-league basketball coach who’s too busy watching game film and looking over X’s and O’s to pay much attention to the one-night stand, Alex (Kaitlin Olson), who’s on her post-coital way out the door.

Marcus has a tarnished reputation thanks to various Bobby Knight-grade altercations, and he only cares about resurrecting his career by making it back to the NBA. Unfortunately, he can’t get out of his own way, and when, during a game timeout, he gets into an argument with head coach Phil (Ernie Hudson) that ends with him shoving his boss, he’s dismissed from his post.

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Down on his luck, Marcus exacerbates his troubles by getting blitzed and then steering his ride straight into a police car. At his ensuing DUI hearing, he’s faced with a choice: get comfortable in prison for 18 months or spend 90 days fulfilling a community-service sentence by coaching The Friends, a community team comprised of men and women with Down syndrome, traumatic brain injuries, and other assorted (ill-defined) conditions. Naturally, Marcus chooses the latter, thereby seemingly setting up a scenario in which he initially bristles at wrangling his wackily unruly players, and then gradually embraces them and, in the process, becomes a better, more altruistic person.

For the most part, Champions follows that template to a tee, except that it’s so toothless—from a narrative and comedic perspective—that it barely bothers with the first part of that equation. Marcus arrives at the local rec center gym run by Julio (Cheech Marin) and seems a little bit out of his element amongst this motley crew. Yet the film is so determined to not offend that it treats its protagonist with kid gloves; a far cry from Walter Matthau’s Morris Buttermaker, Harrelson’s Marcus mostly just goes with the flow.

He accepts his court-ordered gig without complaint and strikes up an immediate rapport with his charges, be it supposed ladies’ man Craig (Matthew Von Der Ahe), geography-obsessed Marlon (Casey Metcalfe), restaurant worker Benny (James Day Keith) or gregarious Johnny (Kevin Iannucci), who—convenient coincidence alert!—just so happens to be the brother of Alex, who earns a living as an actress performing Shakespeare for middle schoolers.

To round out this clichéd package—which, at 123 minutes, overstays its welcome by at least a half-hour—there’s a would-be ringer named Darius (Joshua Felder) who refuses to play for Marcus for mysterious reasons, and an athletic trainer named Sonny (Matt Cook) who’s desperate to be Marcus’ friend and just might be the key to his return to the pro ranks.

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Marcus grows closer to his ragtag players and, at the same time, to Alex, who assumes the role of their de facto chauffeur after a rowdy public bus trip results in a quasi-discriminatory quarrel. There’s also a playground encounter with a prick who, per convention, slanders the Friends with the r-word, all so Marcus can forcefully display his open-mindedness and, more importantly, his mounting loyalty to the outcasts.

There are peculiarities aplenty in Champions, such as Johnny’s body odor problem, which is due to his refusal to shower because he’s afraid of water. What really stinks, however, is the meekness of this supposed comedy, which might have enlivened its stale formula had it risked veering into the very touchy territory it fears. Everything is so warm, fuzzy and pillowy soft that the material amounts to merely rote conflicts and comforting platitudes.

Would you believe that, like Marcus, Alex must figure out how to forge meaningful relationships? Or that Darius’ beef with Marcus has to do with the latter’s drunk-driving infraction? Or that the season climaxes with a regional title contest in which everyone learns what it really means to be a champion? Of course you would, because Farrelly is perfectly satisfied playing a dull, hackneyed game, right down to a wannabe-colorful grandmother who has no qualms about discussing her daughter’s sex life.

The cast members playing the Friends are a likable bunch who share an easygoing chemistry with Harrelson, yet the film rewards them with only the most threadbare of personalities. Harrelson himself, meanwhile, coasts through the action with ho-hum geniality, routinely threatening to color Marcus with actual ugliness and then pulling back lest he upset the innocuous atmosphere.

Farrelly’s affection for these individuals, and their characters, is sincere, warranted and palpable, albeit to a fault; less monotonous gooeyness would have gone a long way when it comes to this uplifting fable. Then again, a single unexpected twist, or sharp joke, would have also done these noble-hearted but listless proceedings some good.

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