80 For Brady

While he’s a house­hold name in the USA, quar­ter­back Tom Brady hasn’t quite announced him­self on the glob­al stage, which is prob­a­bly a lot to do with the fact that Amer­i­can foot­ball itself doesn’t have quite the same inter­na­tion­al draw as, say, ​‘soc­cer’ or ten­nis. For the unaware, Brady is to Amer­i­can foot­ball what Pelé is to actu­al foot­ball – a play­er so preter­nat­u­ral­ly tal­ent­ed, he’s become all but syn­ony­mous with the sport. Since he was draft­ed to the NFL in 2002, Brady has gone on to break almost every major record, includ­ing win­ning sev­en Super­bowls across his 21-year career, mak­ing him the most-award­ed play­er of all time. He retired again in Feb­ru­ary, and will start his new job as lead com­men­ta­tor on Fox next year – but first, he’s got some sprite­ly pen­sion­ers to delight in Kyle Marvin’s feel-good com­e­dy (based on a true sto­ry!).

Best friends Lou (Lily Tom­lin) Trish (Jane Fon­da) Mau­ra (Rita Moreno) and Bet­ty (Sal­ly Field) are die-hard New Eng­land Patri­ots fans, hav­ing devel­oped a love of foot­ball while nurs­ing Lou through her can­cer treat­ment some years pre­vi­ous. In 2017, as ​“the Pats” make it to the Super Bowl LI final in Hous­ton, the gang lament that they won’t see their beloved team face off against the Atlanta Fal­cons in the flesh. But Lou isn’t so eas­i­ly defeat­ed, and a con­ve­nient­ly-timed tele­vi­sion phone-in com­pe­ti­tion soon sees the fab four jet to Texas with the hottest tick­et in town.

From there the gals get into var­i­ous sticky sit­u­a­tions and hijinks on their way to the big game: Trish runs into ex-NFL play­er Dan O’Callahan, where a mutu­al attrac­tion devel­ops; Mau­ra acci­den­tal­ly gets involved in a high-stakes pok­er game; Bet­ty meets Guy Fieri and enters a hot wing eat­ing com­pe­ti­tion, and Lou fields con­tact from her con­cerned daugh­ter, who wants her to call her oncol­o­gist back. Screen­writ­ers Emi­ly Hask­ins and Sarah Halpern (co-writer of Books­mart) build in some decent back­sto­ry, includ­ing Betty’s strained rela­tion­ship with her dither­ing hus­band Mark (Bob Bal­a­ban) and Maura’s lin­ger­ing grief fol­low­ing the death of her hus­band, though it all feels cloy­ing­ly famil­iar, and a lit­tle under­whelm­ing con­sid­er­ing the star pow­er signed on here.

Brady – who also served as pro­duc­er – has a small role, play­ing him­self, and he per­forms exact­ly as well as he has to. It’s prob­a­bly not the start of a daz­zling on-cin­e­mat­ic career for him, but in the grand canon of sports stars on screen, he’s vague­ly charis­mat­ic at least. Nat­u­ral­ly he doesn’t hold a can­dle to Fon­da, Field, Moreno and Tom­lin, with five Acad­e­my Awards and a com­bined 259 years of expe­ri­ence between them. They deliv­er the flim­sy mate­r­i­al admirably, game­ly indulging the cheesi­er lines of dia­logue, but one can’t help but feel that they are under­served by this frothy, for­mu­la­ic out­ing. It’s well-known that decent roles for women over 50 in Hol­ly­wood are few and far between – come back, Nan­cy Mey­ers, we need you des­per­ate­ly – so it’s refresh­ing to see a film that cen­tres not one but four old­er female char­ac­ters (par­tic­u­lar­ly in a genre usu­al­ly dom­i­nat­ed by men), and these icons are clear­ly hav­ing a blast bounc­ing off each oth­er, but the con­cep­tion and exe­cu­tion leave much to be desired.

Per­haps diehard foot­ball fans will have a lit­tle more fun with the premise, but the stars have to do some heavy lift­ing, and as charm­ing as they are togeth­er, one can’t help but won­der if this is the best we can do for actress­es of their cal­i­bre. Sure­ly the indus­try has more to offer for actors and audi­ences of a cer­tain age than tired jokes about edi­bles, and an erot­ic fic­tion sub­plot which feels like a clum­sy throw­back to the hey­day of Fifty Shades of Gray?

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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