Image Patrick Mahomes or Tom Brady trying to play a game with the offensive line from the Kansas Jayhawks. Basically, neither of the greats could show what they're capable of because defensive players would be sacking them repeatedly.
That's about what it's like to endure "National Champions," a sports movie that has something valid to say about the state of college football and of the nation. It's too bad that neither screenwriter Adam Mervis ("21 Bridges") nor director Ric Roman Waugh ("Greenland") can open their mouths without tripping over their own tongues.
A long series of moonlighting sportscasters inform us that New Orleans is hosting the National College Football Championship. Before you can say "exposition," we discover that a couple of players for the Missouri Wolves are planning to sabotage the event.
It has taken only a few minutes, and Mervis and Waugh have pretty much lost the audience. I haven't seen this many cheesy fake football uniforms since Oliver Stone's misbegotten "Any Given Sunday." Apparently, Mervis is so lazy he can't even assign a state to the competing Cougars.
If you have any feeling for football, it's a little disconcerting to think that Mervis couldn't even think of an interesting name for his college showdown. Apparently "The Cereal Bowl" or "The Toilet Bowl" were taken.
It also takes little effort to figure out why Missouri's actual team, the Tigers, doesn't get a mention. "National Champions" deals with how Heisman winner LeMarcus James (Stephan James) and his pal Emmett Sunday (Alexander Ludwig) are organizing a boycott of the season finale because they want their fellow gridiron players to get paid a reasonable wage for breaking their bones on a regular basis. The NCAA would be wise to ignore a film that criticizes the organization because hardly anyone will endure it.
The debate about whether college athletes should be paid for all the revenue they generate is hardly new, but the idea of having players actually boycotting their final amateur game could have been provocative in steadier hands instead of those of Waugh.
It would probably be more entertaining to hear a group of barroom loudmouths bellyache on the subject than it would be to hear some terrific actors drone on for two hours. Admittedly, J.K. Simmons delivers a fine motivating speech to the Wolves for a game they might not play. Because his Coach Lazor is conflicted, he's about the only actor in the movie with a character whose biography might be longer than the contents of a trading card.
It's pointless to cast Kristin Chenoweth as his unfaithful wife because it's obvious he cares more about the status of an opponent's leg than in the welfare of his spouse. The role's only purpose is to keep the plot, which moves at the pace of an arthritic slug, from stalling.
Timothy Olyphant and Tim Blake Nelson both get a chance to pontificate, but like Chenoweth are stuck with characters who are not drawn vividly enough to elicit love, hatred or even mild concern. It also doesn't help that the student athletes in the film are played by actors pushing 30. Suspension of disbelief is hard when the players seem to have been red shirted for a decade.
‘National Champions’
73 Cast: Stephan James, J.K. Simmons, Alexander Ludwig, Uzo Aduba, Lil Rel Howery, Tim Blake Nelson, Timothy Olyphant, Kristin Chenoweth, Jeffrey Donovan, David Koechner
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Rating: R for language throughout and sexual references
Running time: 1 hour, 56 minutes
Playing theatrically
Star quaterback LeMarcus James (Stephan James) sees something bigger than athletic glory at stake when he leads a strike of student-athletes in the days before the biggest game of the year in “National Champions.”Scott Garfield