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Tits 'n football � here's one for the guys!
Al Pacino is an aging coach for the Miami Sharks pro football team, whose owner is bitchy rich girl Cameron Diaz since she inherited the team upon her father's death. The storyline is driven by the tension between a New Guard, who believes winning is all that matters, and the Old Guard, who believes the dignity and legacy of "the game" deserves acknowledgement and respect.
Diaz and a hot, young, black quarterback (Jamie Foxx) represent the New Guard, while Pacino and warhorse quarterback Cap (Dennis Quaid) represent the Old Guard. Between the two factions is the vast majority of franchise players and hangers-on who live each day solely to discover how much nubile sex and cocaine they can grab. Can you say "gratuitous tittie shots," boys and girls?
Once again, MTV has fucked up a film by influencing a director who thinks stutter-cuts and bizarre camera edits is a clever substitute for unobtrusively presenting a story. And it's hard to keep a team's season interesting, since that means every ten minutes we get to see another repetition of sweaty, angry men hitting each other. Once, twice, three times, four times, five times, six times, seven �.
Ann-Margret, who plays the mother, has always been a role model for me. I've respected her beauty, her style and her grace, though I know fifty years in Show Biz has left her a tad too self-absorbed for my tastes. But � well, she's gotten older. Seeing her in this film made me sad.
And Pacino's another favorite � but why, every onscreen second, do I think I'm watching a Graduate Acting Seminar? Are his affectations - his pauses, his awkward emphases, his abrupt emotional variations - too obviously contrived? I'm not sure. It's interesting, but as with the movie's look-at-me directing, Pacino's sophisticated thespian antics tend to distract from the story.
In the end, quarterback Foxx sort of learns the importance of teamwork, Pacino leaves Miami to coach an expansion franchise somewhere in the southwest. And life goes on. No big moral lesson, no real concern for any of the characters - about as much investment from the audience as Monday Night Football.