Champions – Film Review

A former minor-league basketball coach receives a court order to manage a team of players with intellectual disabilities. Despite his doubts, he soon realizes that together they can go further than they ever imagined.

For whatever reason, I just cannot seem to get super into sports movies, even if they’re incredibly wholesome. I can certainly appreciate them, but I can’t ever swoon over them. What I will say right now, though, is that Bobby Farrelly‘s Champions is the closest I’ve gotten to falling in love with a sports movie in quite some time.

Is this an extremely predictable movie that follows the same tried-and-true formula of other sports movies? Yes. One-hundred-precent. But even still, it’s hard not to watch Woody Harrelson‘s jaded and disgraced J-League basketball coach Marcus find his footing and become the best coach he can possibly be for this underdog team.

In my humble opinion, Harrelson is one of the most underrated actors out there. He’s definitely famous and all, but I can’t help but feel as though people don’t give him enough credit for how much on-screen presence he has. My favorite role of his to this day is easily Mr. Bruner in The Edge of Seventeen – an exceptionally blunt high school teacher who isn’t afraid to hurt young Nadine’s feelings.

As Marcus, Harrelson delivers one of his best performances in years. Kaitlin Olson also gets a surprising amount of depth and character development as Alex, Marcus’ love interest. However, she also just so happens to be the sister of a man named Johnny, who just so happens to be on the team that Marcus is coaching so that sort of gets a bit awkward for all parties.

But the film wisely doesn’t choose to focus primarily on Marcus and Alex. Instead, it finds a solid balance between that aspect of the film and the team itself. When it comes to sports teams, they’re quite unlikely. They don’t all get along with each other perfectly well to say the least.

However, they recognize that at the end of the day, they have each other and that’s all that matters. This movie’s message is insanely syrupy sweet but since when did that ever hurt anybody? We live in a world that seems like it’s getting scarier year-by-year (maybe even day-by-day), so this is the exact kind of movie that helps with that realization, and for that alone, I appreciate it immensely.

While it certainly follows the same tried-and-true formula of other sports movies, Champions is nevertheless a highly entertaining, feel-good film boasting a strong cast rounded out by a never-better Woody Harrelson.