The Comebacks

Director Tom Brady and a mind-boggling six writers (for the record: Ed Yeager, Joey Gutierrez, John Aboud, Michael Colton, Adam Jay Epstein, and Andrew Jacobsen) try to give the Airplane!/Naked Gun treatment to the inspirational sports movie. Unfortunately, all they succeed in doing is giving it the Date Movie/Epic Movie treatment—that is, a string of desperately unfunny gags hung loosely on a theme. Brady and co. succeed only in proving once more, as if we needed to be reminded, that what Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker did isn’t as easy as they made it look (for that matter, even they couldn’t make it work every time). David Koechner plays the last-chance college football coach out to win the big game, Melora Hardin is his neglected wife, and Matthew Lawrence his butterfingered quarterback.