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(About Our Ads) "THE COMEBACKS" (2007) (David Koechner, Matthew Lawrence) (PG-13) If you've come from our parental review of this film and wish to return to it, simply click on your browser's BACK button. Otherwise, use the following link to read our complete Parental Review of this film. QUICK TAKE: Comedy: A perpetually losing coach tries to take a college football team to the championships in this spoof of inspirational sports films. PLOT: Lambeau "Coach" Fields (DAVID KOECHNER) has never been successful at any sport he's tried to coach, and thus is surprised when his friend, Freddie Wiseman (CARL WEATHERS), talks him into the head position for the Heartland State football team. Coach's wife, Barb (MELORA HARDIN), isn't that excited since it means he'll once again essentially ignore her and their rebellious teenage daughter, Michelle (BROOKE NEVIN), but she agrees since she knows it's in his blood. Accordingly, he takes over for The Comebacks, and starts assembling the talent for his team. While he relegates the nerdy and small Randy Randinger (MARTIN SPANJERS) to being the water boy and the seemingly mentally challenged IPod (JERMAINE WILLIAMS) as an assistant, he sees promise in running back Aseel Tare (ROCHARD RI'CHARD), despite always calling him "ACL Tear." Wide receiver Trotter (JACKIE LONG) turns out to be a flashy egomaniac who just so happens to be dating Michelle, while Jorge Juanson (JESSE GARCIA) acts like a gang banger but really grew up in the average 'burbs, and hulking lineman Buddy Boy (GEORGE BACK) turns out to be an emotionally sensitive pussycat at heart. Needing to fill other positions, Coach recruits talented soccer player Jizminder Featherfoot (NOUREEN DeWULF) to be his placekicker and only girl on the team, while it takes a little more convincing to get Lance Truman (MATTHEW LAWRENCE) to give up being a baseball pitcher in favor of running the team as its quarterback. That's mainly due to his tendency to fumble the football, a point his cross-dressing celebrity impersonator dad, Mr. Truman (NICK SEARCY), won't let him forget. Coach then tries to whip his team into shape, hoping to take them to the championships, and as they make their run, the film spoofs scenes and general genre material from many well-known sports movies. OUR TAKE: 1 out of 10 Our new reviewing policy for films that aren't shown in advance to critics is that we'll only provide a paragraph or two about the film's artistic merits or, more accurately, lack thereof. After all, life is too short to spend any more effort than that on a movie that even the releasing studio knows isn't any good (which is why they hid it from reviewers before its release). This is yet another entry in the parody genre that shows the filmmakers obviously didn't study the genius behind the "Airplane" and "Naked Gun" films. Rather than come up with genuinely funny material, they instead just trot out as many references to sports movies (regular and those with the inspirational label) as they can muster. All of which means the target audience of teens and twenty-somethings will be able to name the source material, but probably won't laugh at much of the resultant gags. When the coach is offered a job at "Sequel University" at the end, you only hope that the school - or better yet -- the filmmakers have their season suspended due to all sorts of violations, of the bad movie kind. The film rates as a 1 out of 10. Reviewed October 19, 2007/ Posted October 19, 2007