Cham­pi­ons

Broth­ers Peter and Bob­by Far­rel­ly made their names cre­at­ing come­dies that large­ly served to poke fun at oth­er­ness. Peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties (The Dumb and Dumb­er fran­chise), fat peo­ple (Shal­low Hal), the men­tal­ly ill (Me, Myself and Irene) – no one was safe from their juve­nile, of-its-era mock­ery, until some­thing shift­ed and they decid­ed to strike out alone.

The sep­a­ra­tion of the Far­rellys brought old­er bro Pete a shiny Best Pic­ture Oscar for Green Book in 2018; not to be out­done, Bobby’s here now, with his own sto­ry of a cur­mud­geon whose world­view is changed after he has to work with a group of peo­ple he pre­vi­ous­ly dis­missed as beneath him. Based on Javier Fesser’s 2018 Span­ish film of the same name, it’s famil­iar ter­ri­to­ry too – a sports com­e­dy which might not mean much if you’re not into the NBA.

Mar­cus (Woody Har­rel­son) is a bas­ket­ball coach work­ing for a minor league team, whose career has stalled due to his volatile tem­per and refusal to play nice with oth­ers. Although he insists he’s on his way back to the NBA, there’s no sol­id evi­dence to sup­port the state­ment, and he’s fired from his assis­tant coach­ing gig after assault­ing his col­league Phil (Ernie Hud­son) in the mid­dle of a game.

After get­ting into a fend­er ben­der while drown­ing his sor­rows, Mar­cus is sen­tenced to com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. He’s put in charge of coach­ing a local bas­ket­ball team for play­ers with dis­abil­i­ties, which he imme­di­ate­ly takes umbrage with, dis­miss­ing them with a slur when the judge hands down his sen­tence. But in a clas­sic case of ​‘Actu­al­ly, the kids are the ones teach­ing me’, Mar­cus is about to dis­cov­er his new pupils have a lot to show him about the world.

To the film’s cred­it, the cast of bas­ket­ball play­ers con­sists of actors with real life dis­abil­i­ties (a mod­icum of progress in 2023!) and places an empha­sis on bust­ing stereo­types and myths about dis­abled peo­ple by show­ing their com­mu­ni­ty and lives. Sad­ly it still feels nov­el to see a film in which dis­abled char­ac­ters are shown as hav­ing roman­tic rela­tion­ships, jobs, and hob­bies – but this is an indi­ca­tion of how slow cin­e­ma is to rep­re­sent the expe­ri­ence of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, rather than Cham­pi­ons itself being an excep­tion­al film.

Har­rel­son gives a fair­ly rote per­for­mance as the grumpy coach who has a lot to learn about com­pas­sion and being part of a team, while Kaitlin Olson (a gift­ed come­di­an and actor) is under­utilised as his spiky love inter­est. The stand­out, in fact, is Madi­son Tevlin, who plays Con­senti­no – a bas­ket­ball play­er with Down’s Syn­drome who sees right through Marcus’s tough guy act and isn’t afraid to speak her mind. It’s a shame there’s so much empha­sis on Harrelson’s char­ac­ter, when the sup­port­ing cast is rich with charm­ing per­for­mances that are much more inter­est­ing than his famil­iar one.

Undoubt­ed­ly the film means well, but its cliché, entire­ly pre­dictable plot and unin­spired mes­sage mean there’s not much to take away – it feels like a rel­ic from a bygone era, and giv­en Farrelly’s pre­vi­ous form, all feels a lit­tle insincere.

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

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