IS there a single true-life underdog of the sport ing pursuits who has yet to have a movie made about him or her? “The Longshots” (awful title, guys) plays every instrument in the cliché orchestra, but it at least plays them well, and its characters are likable enough to settle in with for a pleasant hour and a half.
Curtis (Ice Cube) is an unemployed dirtbag who spends his days sipping tallboys while watching the kids play football. It’s a tallboy kind of town in Illinois, where leading industries include working in a diner and selling scratch-off lottery tickets. Asked by his sister-in-law to watch over his niece after school and give her a little encouragement when she’s down, Curtis chafes. “I ain’t got no encouragement,” he says. “None. Get Dr. Phil or the Dog Whisperer.”
The girl, Jasmine (Keke Palmer of “Akeelah and the Bee”), isn’t thrilled to be his new mentee. “You really stink,” Jasmine tells him, and she isn’t being figurative.
Curtis carries a football with him at all times, in memory of his former self – he was a high-school jock whose career ended ingloriously when he tore his ACL on the curb – so he teaches the girl how to throw.
“Do you know what a down-and-out is?” he asks.
“You?” she replies.
Jasmine is going to end up being the star quarterback on a boys’ team – something like this actually happened in Illinois – which means the sports-movie machinery will clank pretty loudly (early stumbles, training montage, unexpected victories, the obligatory slo-mo scenes in the mud, a halftime pep talk in a key game, etc.).
Cube and Palmer, though, make it more than bearable. He is grouchy and worn-down but never begs for sympathy, and the movie does not rely too heavily on cheap physical gags. Palmer matches him by being slumped and shy.
Meanwhile, the brown and gray vision of slum life around them gives the movie a more convincing sense of place than can be found in the similarly uplifting sports movies cranked out by Disney every couple of months. The townsfolk are so plucky and happily integrated and cheerful in their poverty, though, that Frank Capra would have called this film corny.
Glancing at the credits, it’s startling to notice that the director is . . . Limp Bizkit singer Fred Durst. It’s as if he used his headbanging rock ‘n’ roll career as a way of getting noticed by the Hallmark Channel.
THE LONGSHOTS
Well-thumbed playbook.
Running time: 94 minutes. Rated PG (profanity). At the E- Walk, the 84th Street, the 19th Street, others.