Champions (12A, 123 min)
Judgment: Scores points
Scream VI (18, 123 mins)
Judgement: 
Verdict: Narrowly formal
The Spanish film Campeones was a huge critical and commercial hit when it came out five years ago. Inspired by real life events in Valencia, it told the story of a disgraced basketball coach who, after being convicted of drunk driving, was sentenced to community service by taking charge of a team of mentally challenged players.
An English-language version seemed only a matter of time, and here it is: set in Des Moines, Iowa, with Woody Harrelson as the assistant coach of a minor league basketball team, the Iowa Stallions.
I saw Champions on Wednesday at a gala screening to benefit the Mencap charity, in front of an audience largely made up of people with learning and other disabilities. The movie got a lot of love from them, so I don’t feel inclined to beat it.
Directed by Bobby Farrelly in his first directing outing away from his brother Peter (with whom he made the 1994 hit Dumb And Dumber), it’s a modest crowd pleaser. But from where I sat, it set up a series of emotional slam dunks without actually scoring one.
At first, Marcus (Harrelson) is a world-weary dude who believes he’s coaching way below his rightful level, and expresses his frustration by getting involved in a fight on the field and then driving drunk. He is arrested and duly fired by the Stallions.
Woody Harrelson plays assistant coach of a minor league basketball team, the Iowa Stallions
A judge orders Marcus (Harrelson) to spend three months coaching The Friends, a team made up of young people with Down syndrome, autism and other special needs.
Soon a judge orders him to coach The Friends for three months, a team made up of young people with Down syndrome, degrees of autism and other special needs.
There are echoes of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), which also happened to have a memorable basketball scene; and even, as Marcus’ skill with his accusations makes him reconsider his professional future, of To Sir, With Love (1967).
There’s nothing wrong with such cinematic echoes. But Mark Rizzo’s script is a little lackluster and the dramatic conflicts this kind of story requires, to make the lead character’s inevitable redemption all the more satisfying, feel fabricated.
Unlike his Spanish film counterpart, Marcus has no wildly hurtful prejudices to correct, just a penchant for “the R word” and some misconceptions about Down syndrome, which he is quickly corrected.
A subplot, where Marcus tries to pull the strings on one of his former Stallions colleagues and get him a job with a top team, is particularly lame.
Still, there’s a compelling romance with Alex (a fine performance by Kaitlin Olson), which springs from an unfavorable one-night stand and becomes even more complicated when she turns out to be the sister of one of Marcus’s players, Johnny (Kevin Iannucci). .
And Harrelson, as always, is an engaging presence on screen. Champions is about as formal as a movie can be, but it certainly isn’t lacking in heart.
Scream VI is another formula-driven exercise: the latest in the so-called “slasher franchise” that began in 1996.
Like the previous photo in the series, last year’s Scream, he’s doing his best to get his pie and stick it in, parodying the slasher genre (not least by openly referencing Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday The 13th and Psycho) while adhering strictly to his conventions, while a killer in a macabre ghost mask once again terrorizes the long-suffering Carpenter sisters Samantha (Melissa Barrera) and Tara (Jenna Ortega).
Like the previous picture in the series, last year’s Scream, Scream VI goes out of its way to take its pie and stick it in, parodying the slasher genre
Courteney Cox reprises her role as TV host Gale Weathers, who ends up battling the terrifying masked psychopath
As these things go, it’s slick and cleverly done. Courteney Cox reprises her role as TV host Gale Weathers, who ends up battling the terrifying masked psychopath in a cool Manhattan apartment. . . just to put Monica to bed in Friends once and for all.
I also surprised myself quite a bit by enjoying a scene – and this betrays nothing, as it all happens before the opening credits – in which an associate professor of film studies, who lectures on scary movies, is lured into a dark alley and horrifically dispatched . Still, it could have been worse.
She could have been a critic.
.