Home Team

A family comedy drawn from real events. Sean Payton is the head coach of a professional American football team. After an investigation he is suspended for a full season. He has time on his hands and somewhere he has drifted away from: his son, who lives in Texas. He goes there and starts coaching his son's school team. The team is bad; the boys lose and do not enjoy playing either. The comedy comes from Payton trying to apply professional methods to children: complicated plays, a serious training regime, and adult language used with eleven-year-olds. At first none of it works. At the centre is the distance between a father and a son. The man enters his child's life as a coach because he does not know how to enter it as a father. Kevin James plays Payton; Taylor Lautner and Rob Schneider are in the cast. It went straight to a streaming service. A light choice for anyone who likes family comedy and sports films. For a viewer expecting a realistic sports story, the film rests its humour on jokes aimed at children and barely opens up the contested side of the real events.