Football’s history with the movies has never been very good.
Sports movies are already tired and cliched to begin with, to the point where it could be lampooned with minimal effort. Football movies tend to be the genre’s most boring entries, though. Even the acclaimed ones like Rudy or Remember the Titans fall victim to the same predictability and misplaced sentimentality. Somehow, they’re always about an underdog who has to chase the impossible dream, being an inspiration for everyone else. Even more mind boggling that they can keep finding real life stories to turn into drecks. There were 3 of them in 2006 alone (Invincible, We Are Marshall, Gridiron Gang). Really, how many inspirational true stories can one sport have?
So for those of you who hate football and football movies, here’s a top five list of films that defy the usual tired approach to the genre. On this day of Superbowl, join in the football mania without having to watch a single second of the game by catching any one of these flicks instead.
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5. LEATHERHEADS
What do you get when you have award-winning Sports Illustrated writers pen a screenplay for a football movie based on a piece of obscure NFL history, set in the early days of professional football? Sounds like a stuffy thing only football fans would like, right? But make it a comedy and throw in George Clooney, John Krasinski, Renee Zellweger and Stephen Root, then it’s anything but.
Leatherheads is the screwball comedy version of how a small team called the Duluth Eskimos saved the NFL from folding back in the 1920’s, thanks to their signing of Stanford University All-American Ernie Nevers. In the movie, the names are changed and the events wildly exaggerated for comedic effect, but the story is essentially the same: struggling team signs popular college star, helps establish pro football’s popularity.
Perhaps the most interesting bit in the film is the notion that the NFL’s rules ruined the fun of the sport. The movie certainly favors the goofy rough-and-tumble plays of Duluth before the football commissioner is introduced and the football games become “boring,” to quote the film.
Non-football fans: If you don’t like the football, maybe you’ll like the screwball.
4. JERRY MAGUIRE
Jerry Maguire is one of those films whose reputation precedes it. In the 14 years since it release, it’s already a beloved classic by many, helped by memorable quotes even people who haven’t seen the movie can recite.
It’s casually remembered as a Tom Cruise-Renee Zellweger romance even though the movie firmly embeds itself in the cutthroat world of sports management. Jerry Maguire has plenty of stuff to talk about football, but shifts the focus to the wheelings and dealings of being in the sport, rather than the sport itself.
Its famous catchphrase “Help me, help you” could’ve been a halftime mantra—an ode to teamwork—but instead of the tandem between teammates, here it’s between athletes and the agents who shape their careers.
Non-football fans: You really don’t need to know anything about football to like this movie. It works better as a date night film than a beer-and-chips outing with the dudes.
3. ANY GIVEN SUNDAY
When you get Oliver Stone to direct a football movie, chances are you won’t get the usual football movie. Stone approached the NFL with the same harsh judgment and explicit stroke as he would a corrupt government. He took the archetypes of the usual football movies (the ambitious rookie, the determined aging quarterback, the weary hardnosed coach) and gave them a modern, cynical spin. The motive is no longer the love of the game—it’s the contracts, the fame, the endorsements... All the things about the NFL that sucks you in, chews you up and spits you out.
Any Given Sunday still shows the football games, but it would function just as well without them. In fact, the games come across more as an obligatory necessity of the genre. Stone uses them as his way to punctuate (and hilariously exaggerate) the violence of the sport, complete with the dramatic eye-gouging of one player as the result of a tackle, portraying the athletes as modern-day gladiators sacrificing their limbs for quick fixes of the high life, while bloodthirsty promoters manipulate them like chess pieces.
A lot of football fans are quick to dismiss Any Given Sunday. It has no discernible plot, it’s not interested in plays and it offers none of the inspirational stories closely associated with a football movie. It just has one singular goal that it follows with an over-the-top rage, which is to expose the televised football world as a cesspool.
Non-football fans: Guess what? This movie hates Football Sunday and Monday Night Football just as much as you do.
2. HORSE FEATHERS
The Marx Brothers can make fun of anything, and football is not immune to that rule. Horse Feathers revolves around college football games, where Groucho Marx’s headmaster character decides to hire professional football players to win over the rival college, but a series of mistakes lead him to hiring the hapless Chico and Harpo.
It’s as much a college comedy as it is a football comedy, with a lot of hijinks surrounding Chico and Harpo’s enrollment as students. The main satire, however, somewhat criticizes what college football does to the learning institution. Students are traded and bought (via scholarships) like pro players, while the rules are almost arbitrary.
When a football movie has a football game involving dogs, banana peels and a horse carriage, you know it’s something else.
Non-football fans: Don’t worry, it’s hilarious and completely absurd in its portrayal of the football games.
1. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
All the other films on this list are somewhat critical of football (or at least the business end of it), so let’s end it on a positive note. Friday Night Lights doesn’t just expel the cynicism, it’s downright hopeful, inspirational, and all about the sport. Yet it’s plenty appealing even to those who have no love for the game. It helps that the movie is about high school football, a far more innocent and raw institution than the NFL.
Friday Night Light’s main strength is in its portrayal of Odessa, Texas as a football town, where the streets would be barren during a game and an adult’s reputation could depend on their son’s football performance. There’s also the town’s social and economic downturn, which is represented in many of the football player’s families. For many of them, football isn’t just a hobby. It’s literally a hope to cling to.
It’s as much a social examination as it is a sports movie. The inspirational story isn’t just a bunch of folks professing their love for the game and their desire to play—it’s how a town and its people get by the worst conditions with the one thing they universally share.
Non-football fans: Ignore the fact that you don’t like football as much as these characters do and be amazed at how something as banal as this sport could be so essential to some people’s lives.
