The Longest Yard
One Star
by Norman Wilner, Zap2it.com
Adam Sandler's remake of "The Longest Yard" feels like it escaped from some Bizarro universe where Sandler never re-invented himself as a real actor, and kept making frat-boy comedies instead. It's the lamest thing he's done in a decade. Don't get me wrong; this movie would suck even if it was the first time someone had made a movie about a football star who goes to prison and winds up forming a team of brutal convicts to play the even more bloodthirsty guards.
But this is the third run at Tracy Keenan Wynn's script -- Vinnie Jones starred in a British remake, "Mean Machine," four years ago -- and it's the worst by any measure. It's as though Sandler and his usual group of collaborators (including director Peter Segal and production designer Perry Andelin Blake) didn't even bother to order up a script; they just rented the DVD of the original and ran out to the set to make up some stuff around it.
Sandler is, at first, an interesting choice for a part originated by Burt Reynolds in Robert Aldrich's 1974 cable staple: His sarcastic deference as the convict quarterback is almost the polar opposite of Reynolds' gritty defiance, and it makes you wonder where they're going to take the character. The answer, unfortunately, is nowhere at all.
After setting itself up as a reasonably serious prison picture, with lots of beatings and a fairly savage attitude, "The Longest Yard" turns into a really lame Adam Sandler movie, with fat jokes and gay jokes and some silliness with a guard who's tricked into taking estrogen instead of his steroids, and becoming all sensitive and delicate. Yes, Chris Rock has a supporting part, and Sandler's "Spanglish" co-star Cloris Leachman appears as the warden's lascivious secretary, and Reynolds himself turns up as a shadow of his former self. Just pretend you don't see them. It's easier that way.
Paramount's DVD -- available in separate full-frame and enhanced-widescreen editions -- boasts the marketing-department supplements: A 20-minute look at the production and two shorter featurettes focusing on the pro athletes recruited to fill out the cast roster and the use of NFL camera tricks to shoot the climactic game.
There's no audio commentary, but director Segal appears in voiceover to discuss five special-effects sequences and nine deleted scenes. Finally, there's a blooper reel, a music video for Nelly's "Errtime" and a montage of footage set to Nelly's "Boom." So, you know, another music video.
