‘IT smells authentic,” somebody says in “Resurrecting the Champ.” Well, it smells, all right, but authentic isn’t the word I’d use for this maudlin male weepie, a compendium of the worst clichés of sports and journalism movies.
“This article is my title shot,” Erik (Josh Hartnett), a struggling sports reporter for a fictitious Denver newspaper, tells Champ (Samuel L. Jackson), a homeless drunk he discovers in an alley.
Erik believes that Champ is a famous ex-middleweight contender from the early 1950s (which, by my calculations, would make the character somewhere close to 80) and plans to write an article that will salvage his own foundering career and life.
Erik’s boss (Alan Alda) thinks he’s a mediocre writer – he certainly speaks in mediocre dialogue – and his estranged wife (Kathryn Morris) is a rising star, an investigative reporter at the same paper.
The self-pitying Erik blames his fate on the shadow of his late father, a famous radio sportscaster. Erik has such shaky self-esteem that he lies to his young son (Dakota Goyo) about knowing sports figures like John Elway (who appears as himself).
Erik sees the Champ as his ticket out of Palookaville – “Wait till they hear what you’ve been through!” – but his boss is uninterested. In this highly inauthentic version of a newspaper newsroom, he turns around and sells the article to the editor (David Paymer) of the paper’s magazine.
The piece causes such a sensation that he is wooed by a casting agent for Showtime (Teri Hatcher), but questions soon emerge about the authenticity of the Champ’s story and Erik’s casual approach to journalistic ethics, which he apparently learned at the Columbia School of Journalism.
Hartnett, who once seemed like a contender (circa 2001 and “Black Hawk Dawn”), muffs his latest attempt at a comeback with yet another glib performance.
And the film largely wastes some fine work by Jackson in a bathetic script and tear-jerking direction by Rod Lurie (“The Contender”).
“Resurrecting the Champ” is supposedly based on a nonfiction article by a Los Angeles Times reporter J.R. Moehringer – but it comes off as Hollywood fantasy at its worst.
RESURRECTING THE CHAMP
*
Down for the count.
Running time: 111 minutes. Rated PG-13 (violence, brief language). At the Empire, the Kips Bay, the Harlem USA, others.