Cube Vision’s new movie ‘The Longshots’ has a couple of things working in it’s favor even before I step into the screening, with one being that I’m a sucker for all things football movie. I hope to own every football movie ever made in my DVD collection, with the probable exception of ‘The Longest Yard’ remake, because the original of that film just might be the best football movie ever. The second thing that this movie has working in its favor for me is that my young son has informed that the star of this film, fourteen year old Keke Palmer, is hot. Now of course I don’t quite see this since I have food in my freezer that’s older than she is, but I guess for a twelve year old she would qualify as an ‘older woman’. This pleases me and the missus because it does lead us to believe that the boy isn’t gay, though there would be nothing wrong with him if he were, and if young Miss Palmer plays her cards right, she could be my daughter-in-law one day. So how in the hell am I gonna find it in my heart to hate on this movie?

Jasmine Plummer is your typical misunderstood junior high student growing up in a beat up, run down town somewhere in Florida that time has forgotten. All Jasmine wants to do is read her books and her fashion magazines and generally be left alone, but the students at her school seem to revel in picking on her and her mother Claire (Tasha Smith) wants to see her get out more and experience something outside of her books. Claire’s job has caused her to work longer hours and with no where else to turn to she makes a request of Curtis (Ice Cube), the brother of Jasmine’s wayward father to keep an eye on the kid until she can make it home.

Curtis is EXTREMELY reluctant to do this as he has almost no relationship with his young niece, but since he’s been out of work since the town plant closed years ago and with compensation in mind, he agrees to do the deed. Now Curtis and Jasmine don’t see eye to eye on much being as how Curtis thinks the kid is weird and Jasmine questions the sanity of a grown man who walks around everywhere with a football

in one hand and brown bag of beer in the other. Their relationship isn’t helped much by the incredibly nasty things they say to each other, though Curtis being the adult in this equation should probably know better. That all changes the day Jasmine tosses a football Curtis’ way. Sensing the girl has talent, he decides to teach her the fine art of quarterbacking, and even manages to convince the town’s Pop Warner coach to give her a tryout for the town’s downtrodden football team. Football manages to bring uncle and niece very close to each other though the specter of Jasmine’s absentee father is always present. But despite that, Jasmine has led her team to a string of gloriously improbable victories and has even managed to rally the citizens of this rundown town to root for something for first time in a long time, as Jasmine Plummer becomes the first girl ever to play in the Pop Warner Superbowl. Somewhere down the line I see a final play against a bigger strong faster team with the game clock ticking down to triple zero.

Though I didn’t find ‘The Longshots’ quite as enchanting as I found the similar themed football movie ‘The Grid Iron Gang’, it is still a very good and very entertaining football movie. Formulaic? Yes. Derivative? Yes. Predictable? Of course silly, it’s a football movie for goodness sakes and Limp Bizkit front man Fred Durst who directs this film is fully aware that this is an overly sentimental formulaic football movie and shamelessly drives it forward amidst the backdrop of soaring strings and gritty, sentimental images. Leads Palmer and Cube handle their roles admirably and more importantly, considering they spent the vast majority of the movie together, they played off of each other quite well and had no problems selling us on their affection for one another. The film also benefits from a squad of quirky character actors playing the townsfolk, led by Garrett Morris, who all manage to give some depth and texture to this rundown town which has the audience cheering as much for them as they cheer for their football team.

Like most football movies I see there are the occasional football logic issues I notice that pop up here and there, though this one wasn’t as bad as some because truth be told, there wasn’t all that much football being played as the movie was more about relationships. But one thing we should note is that a quarterback wears that red jersey in practice for a reason coach, not just because red is a pretty color. Any football player that tries to take the head off a quarterback wearing a red jersey, even if she happens to be a girl, would probably be kicked off the team. Definitely if he did it two times in a row. Other than that though the football on the field wasn’t too bad, certainly not as electric as the football that was filmed in ‘The Gridiron Gang’, but miles better than the generically fake football in Dwayne’ The Rock’ Johnson’s other football movie ‘The Game Plan’.

I suppose I should also point out that my son is a little upset at the marketing of this movie since the commercials mention Ice Cube but not Keke Palmer. I tried to explain to him that Ice Cube is like the big star in this thing, and they are trying to sell the movie to people who actually have jobs to pay to see movies and not kids who have crushes on little girls in movies, but he’s not hearing it. You marketing guys probably should have put Miss Palmer’s name just below the title, understanding Cube’s name is on top, to appease her many fans.

Hey, it’s a football movie, and as I’ve said on numerous occasions, football movies are almost impossible to screw up. Even a rock star turned movie director can guide a football movie if he just follows the basic formula. Somebody cue the string section.