We're back to the basics this week, covering Charles Stone III's "The Underdoggs," starring Snoop Dog, Mike Epps, and George Lopez. This is a film we've been barking for: a kids' centered sports movie in the vein of The Might Ducks, Little Giants, or The Big Green, only raunchier. Filled with direct callbacks to each of movies (including a scene where a Hummer arrives on the football field just as Emilio Estevez infamously had his limo driver park on the ice, an Annexation of Puerto Rico-inspired trick play, and an asthmatic kid with an overbearing, neurotic mom a la the nose-bubble dweeb in Little Giants), The Underdoggs fills like a giant homage to his 90s predecessors.
For what this 90-minute comedy offers, we found it a success. As most know, boys are a puerile bunch. They curse, they say dirty jokes, they're rowdy. The Underdoggs leans into this reality, and it does so with winks that let us know that the kids sports movies we grew up loving still have a niche place in the culture today. Sure, the dramatic beats and attempts at poignancy feel rushed and hasty (lost in the glib pastiche of surface sentiment and elision by way of meta winks), but The Underdoggs' rehashes the tropes and archetypes we know so well at the same time, reviving this little subgenre with blunts, runts, and unfiltered glee.
Enjoy!
