The Longest Yard film review

certificate_12A

THE LONGEST YARD

Adam Sandler obviously fancies himself as a bit of a sportsman. He was a golfer in Happy Gilmore and an American footballer in The Waterboy. He's a gridiron hero once again in The Longest Yard, playing Paul Crewe an ex-pro quarterback who finds himself in prison coaching a motley group of fellow inmates against a well-drilled team of guards. Previously it's Sandler's character's unlikely sporting prowess that has been the central theme, this time round it's not Crewe's ability that is in doubt but his integrity in this frequently funny remake of the 1974 comedy.

Director Peter Segal clearly enjoys a good rapport with Sandler having previously worked together on Anger Management and 50 First Dates. Finding the humanity behind the clown is key. Segal has successfully reined in Sandler's more outlandish tendencies without neutering him and his dead pan Crewe is the perfect contrast to Chris Rock's wise-cracking Caretaker. The assorted musclebound freaks, retards and sociopaths, who resemble extras from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest more than a team of athletes, certainly present a sizable butt for Crewe and Caretaker's jokes.

Crewe's incarceration is courtesy of a vengeful girlfriend (Courtney Cox) who resented having her precious Bentley demolished in a drunken joyride. It isn't his first crime, having had his career ignominiously ended six years earlier amidst a game fixing scandal. When he arrives in the tough Texas penitentiary he is courted by the warden (James Cromwell) to help return the once triumphant guards football team to winning ways. Crewe suggests a moral boosting victory over a bunch of lackluster opponents. The inmates of Allenville certainly fit that description, so it is that Crewe finds himself assigned to corralling the misfits into the semblance of a team and lead them like lambs to inevitable slaughter.