The Comebacks will not come back from this review. That may be a lame joke but it's the funniest thing about this movie. I've had it with people not knowing how to make spoof movies. I even forgave Date Movie and Epic Movie, figuring they were just like the MTV Movie Awards style without the A-list comedians. But it's finally gone too far.
Review: The Comebacks
It's real simple people: Play it straight. Ridiculous stuff is only funny if you believe it's straight. And I think you have to love the genre you're spoofing. Airplane clearly loves disaster movies, Naked Gun loves cop movies and Scary Movie as a clear affinity for horror films. Sports movies are ripe for this material and it seems the makers of The Comebacks don't even get what's funny about the source to begin with.
First of all, the star is completely wrong for this style of comedy. David Koechner plays nothing straight. He is a caricature and a clown. There's a reason Leslie Nielsen was always so funny. He never acted like he was being stupid. He acted like he was following police procedure. Koechner overdoes everything with the voice, pushing out his gut and gyrating his limbs all over the place. Fine for its place, but not the lead of a spoof.
Some of the kids seem to get it. Matthew Lawrence plays it straight and Carl Weathers is sincere. He hams up a few scenes but in a sincere sports movie character kind of way.
Now, you're making fun of a genre where the most handicapped characters overcome the most outrageous setbacks to have unprecedented success. That's inherently ridiculous but we still love them. That is what's funny, not just mentioning all the sports movies you can remember.
If you're setting up the worst coach in athletic history, he's got to be someone who's trying to be good but failing. Just not paying attention isn't funny. That's admitting you suck.
If you're making fun of how an obsessed coach neglects his family, he's got to be well meaning but hopelessly misguided. Forgetting his kids names over and over is stupid to begin with (not to mention hopelessly old by now), so there's nowhere to go and it's not based on a humorous premise.
Naming characters after the injuries they're going to suffer isn't funny. It's a sports movie. You know someone's going to become the Gipper. Telegraphing the fact that you're telegraphing something doesn’t make it funny.
Just being dirty isn't enough. Jerking off Seabiscuit isn't funny unless you apply it to the legend of Seabiscuit. Literal sex jokes where it sounds like they're talking about something dirty but then they show you the real thing aren't funny unless the real thing is even funnier than the dirty thing.
Special effects don't make it funny. You can have the athletes do ridiculously outrageous moves, but unless that's inherent to the formula, you're just doing a reference. You're just saying, "Look, this time she's kicking the ball around the goal and back, or she's doing impossibly gymnastics." Not funny, just referenced.
You want to see how it's done, Dodgeball and Blades of Glory nailed the formula by embracing it. Major League was funny within it, though not really mocking itself. There's a South Park episode that's such an anti-underdog story that you feel sad for the characters who get their asses kicked and die of cancer. A cartoon with construction paper cutouts went for the emotion!
There are a few scattered laughs that feel like they scored as a fluke. A banana peel on the Nascar track is funny because you've got to love a banana peel. Updating the Radio character to be iPod is a commentary on modern culture, but I doubt they realized that. They surely just thought, "What's another thing you can listen to music on?" Doing the opposite of Coach Carter would be perfect if Koechner played it straight but he does his clown thing. Leslie Nielsen would have sold it better than Samuel L. Jackson himself. Same goes for playing the violin. That sight gag might have a place in a sports spoof, if you could sell that you might be legitimately playing the violin. Same for reacting to the kid's dying wish.
I sure hope that stunt man got paid well for the fire gag, because it doesn't help The Comebacks be funny. The Comebacks makes Scary Movie 2 look like Scary Movie 1.
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