Champions

A comedy about a basketball team. Marcus is an assistant coach in a minor league. He cannot hold his temper, fights with the head coach on court and loses his job. The same night he is caught driving drunk. The judge gives him a choice: prison or ninety days of community service. The placement is a sports centre and the work is coaching a team of players with intellectual disabilities. Marcus treats it as a punishment and plans to serve out the time. The players take him seriously. The film is about the coach changing, but it does not use the players only as the means of that change; each has his own work, home and business, and these get their place in the scenes. The basketball sections are kept realistic; the team both wins and loses. Many of the cast have intellectual disabilities in fact and appear before a camera for the first time in these parts. The source is a Spanish film from 2018, of which this is the American version. Woody Harrelson plays Marcus. Kaitlin Olson, Ernie Hudson and Cheech Marin are in the cast. Bobby Farrelly directed. A warm choice for anyone who likes sports comedy and stories about teams. For a viewer wanting a new narrative, the film takes the known steps of its genre in order.