The Texas State Armadillos were national champions of college football. They were also cheating in a variety of ways, including steroid use, paying players under the table, and fixing grades so players could remain academically eligible. So their national championships were nullified - do you remember them winning the national championship? No you don't, according to the NCAA - scholarships revoked, and coaches fired. The program is dead.
The university president (Fred Thompson) decides to rehab the school's rep by hiring Ed "Straight Arrow" Gennero (Hector Elizondo), a retired coach known for not tolerating any sketchy stuff, even if it means kicking a star player off the team. That's why he's retired, boosters don't approve of principles. But this shattered husk of a program has no boosters, so Gennero gets to run the program as he sees fit. He brings in his old defensive coordinator, Wally Rig (Robert Loggia) to help turn a bunch of walk-on students into a football team.
Unfortunately, none of the walk-ons with good enough grades to survive the obnoxious dean's (Larry Miller) attempts to kill the team can play quarterback, so Wally recruits Paul Blake (Scott Bakula), who walked away from football 16 years ago to run the family cattle ranch, to play QB. As a 34-year-old freshman. Who smokes, a lot, and runs like a guy who smokes a lot and spent the last decade-and-a-half wrangling large, stubborn cattle.
Can Blake be the leader Gennero wants? Can he get this group of oddballs to play together and experience victory?
I did, technically, discuss this movie briefly in the opening paragraph of a comic review post back in 2009, but it wasn't really a proper review. Now, does this movie merit a proper review? Well, at least as much as any number of shitty movies I watched on Netflix over the years.
This movie is like Escape to Athena, where it's as much about what a bonkers cast it has as anything the movie itself actually does with that cast. Escape to Athena is better, having the advantage of being a suspenseful adventure set in World War 2. That's a stronger base for a story. Necessary Roughness is ultimately just a sports comedy, but it's full of people where I can stop and go, "Hey, That Guy!"
Besides the people listed above, you have early career Jason Bateman as the spoiled son of a major donor to the university. Sinbad plays a professor that walked away from college football to pursue chemistry. Blake convinces him to use his last year of eligibility to play offensive and defensive line. Rob Schneider is the team's radio announcer (we only ever see him in the broadcast booth, and he never directly interacts with anyone else, which is probably the best way to use Rob Schneider.) Desperate for a field goal kicker, Wally recruits Lucy (Kathy Ireland) from the girl's soccer team. Harley Jane Kozak plays an Intro to Journalism professor that had a crush on Blake when they went to rival high schools, and the two start up a relationship. While she's one of his teachers.
Which, look. In addition to Miller playing a snotty little tin dictator of a bureaucrat as he so often has, the dean is panting after Dr. Carter, and absolutely determined to crush the team by hook or crook. That said, I don't think he's wrong there are ethical concerns about a teacher dating a student, even if they're both in their 30s. Especially when the student's participation in an extra-curricular is contingent on his grades staying up, though the one example of Blake's work we hear in a class assignment demonstrates a thoughtfulness that suggests he's at least trying to be a good student.
(Also, Bakula is 37 when the movie came out, so he's at least close to 34, unlike all the movies and shows where a 28-year-old plays a high schooler.)
The rest of the roster is filled with various broad characters. Manu, a big Samoan guy that plays center and initially annoys Blake by treating him as an elder to be respected. (Blake's response: 'I'm not that eld.') A bull-riding farm boy. A pair of twins that spend a lot of time fighting each other. An ROTC guy that's way too intense. A white boy really into martial arts that gets nicknamed "Samurai", and is the sole guy who only plays defense (Blake being the one who only plays offense.) A track star turned wideout who can't catch. An Aussie rugby player that doesn't want to wear pads or helmets. The Aussie gets knocked out in practice and Gennero admiringly observes he didn't drop the pass. Sure, only cost him a few thousand brain cells.
The movie has a lot going on. Probably too much. My dad said once it feels like a pilot for a TV show that got turned into a movie instead. Blake and Carter's relationship. Blake trying to figure out what, exactly Gennero is trying to get from him. Rig trying to get at little respect as a coach (his only offer prior to this was to coach football at a girl's school. In England.) Bateman's thing with his dad. The dean's attempts to cut the team off at the knees. Manu and Lucy strike up a relationship almost immediately, Manu trying very hard to be chivalrous. Not that I can blame him, hustling to make time with Kathy Ireland.
There probably could have been something about Lucy trying to prove herself to a team full of guys. When she's showing off her ability to kick (showing really terrible form, she's moving flat-footed), Sinbad opines this is what happened to pro wrestling, women taking over. Yeah, and once we got past the obnoxious bra-panty match shit (and Jerry Lawler's brain-dead drooling over same) it kicked ass.
As it is, the team sucks so bad they can't afford to turn down any help they can get, though Gennero is still reluctant to even let her on the field to attempt a game-tying field goal. Because he's afraid she'll get hurt. Typically kickers don't get hit much. There are penalties for it and everything.
There's the sole holdover from last year's team, a walk-on named Charlie Banks, who still can't get on the field for a team that's resorted to having 10 guys play both offense and defense. You think they'd at least try giving those guys the occasional breather, risk playing the few other players they have. Especially when they're losing games 40-6. Apparently Gennero's in the Tom Thibodeau school of coaching that says you aren't trying to win unless you grind your best players into dust by playing them constantly.
So some things get more run than others. Bateman's issues with his dad just buying his way through trouble crops up very briefly near the start of the final third of the movie, but there's really nothing to set it up beyond Gennero telling Rig that the dad's name is on buildings all over campus.
The Gennero and Blake issue surfaces periodically. I can't really figure out what Gennero is looking for any more than Blake can. (Carter at one point suggests simply asking Gennero. Blake responds that a coach can't speak to a player like he's human.) In their first game, Gennero calls the same running play three times in a row, the first two attempts being disasters. When the huddle groans on the third time, Blake changes the play to a deep pass to Featherstone, the track star. It would have been a touchdown, except Featherstone can't catch. Gennero benches Blake for the rest of the game. When Blake tries prostrating himself the next day, promising to just run whatever Gennero calls so long as he can play, promising it's Gennero's team, Gennero says it has to be Blake's team, but won't explain that.
Which I guess is not speaking to him like he's human, but more like some sage or hermit on a mountaintop, talking in riddles. I mean, Blake tried to make it his team, by calling a play that might actually work, and Gennero immediately punished him.
Blake tries joining the team at a bar after another loss, tries keeping them out of a fight with the star linebacker of the #1 team in the nation, the Texas Colts, until said linebacker - appropriately named Flattop - insults Manu. Blake sticks up for his center, by starting a brawl. That's no good either. When they manage a not-loss and Bateman's dad invites the team to a party with champagne and nice jackets, Gennero shows up screeching about boosters and not accepting gifts. Blake (already in a bad mood because the dean caught him making kissy face with Dr. Carter) tells him to back off, and Gennero gets on his ass again.
I think Gennero wants Blake to get the entire team rowing in the same direction, but none of his attempts are apparently acceptable until Blake gets Sinbad to help Bateman actually study to pass his midterms. Which are happening awfully late in the semester to be taking place ahead of their final game, against, naturally, the Texas Colts. This is also the conclusion of Bateman's character's arc. He refuses to give his dad the chance to bail him out, because it would hurt the team if one of the players got their grades paid for.
Loggia gets the best lines. Early on, it's sarcastic asides to things Gennero says. Featherstone drops a pass in practice and Gennero tells him to keep his eyes on the ball. Rig adds, 'Keep your hands on the ball, too.' When Gennero tells him to keep his nose out of Gennero's offense, Rig replies, 'You got a quarterback that can't throw the ball, we're gonna be playing a hell of a lot of defense.'
During the climactic game, where Rig has to be head coach, it's things he shouts. 'Don't throw it to Stone Hands!' is one my dad still quotes, but the best is probably Rig's halftime speech where he stops trying to act like the polite and intellectual coach he thinks people want and starts screaming about how you play winning football. 'You go out there and tear off their fucking heads and shit down their necks! *pause* Now let us pray.'
It's funny neither coach seems very good at the half of the ball they're in charge of. Gennero seems to favor an offense that runs the ball. Wins in the trenches, controls the clock. The team is not built for it. The offensive line can't handle it, and their running backs crash into each other a lot. Plus, for all Blake's limitations in mobility (he gets better as the season progresses), the dude's arm is legit. Bateman and the Australian rugby guy can at least catch the ball if Featherstone can't. So can Charlie Banks. Throw the fucking ball! Go West Coast Offense, short, timed passing game, with Blake zipping it into tight windows and the receivers using their shiftiness to gain additional yards after the catch.
Meanwhile, Rig is a defensive coordinator, but can't recognize what defensive coverage the Colts are using at one point, and has to ask Popke, the back-up QB who thought being asked to show off his arm meant flexing. Late in the game, it's Gennero who figures out what defense to call to stop a Colts' drive and get the Armadillos the ball back.
Like I said several paragraphs ago, it's a sports movie. The team is losing big in the climactic game, then turns it around after Rig's inspiring speech, with trick plays and some other big stuff. I do laugh when, prior to the final play, Manu promises Blake that they'll (meaning the Colts' defense) never touch him. Blake probably wishes you could have managed that any time in the previous 59 minutes and 59 seconds, because he's taking head shots on almost every play. By the end of that game, Blake probably had fewer brain cells left than the rubgy guy.
It doesn't reinvent the wheel in any particular way, and feels both overstuffed and undercooked, but there are some funny lines and it plays the usual beats well enough that I don't mind spending 100 minutes on it.
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