The Hindu Business Line : The Longest Yard - It's all about giving it back

YOU don't have to know American football to enjoy The Longest Yard. All you need is a pet grouse and willingness to morph faces from real life onto policemen getting knocked around in a match with the underdogs - convicts.

Which tired soul in a big city doesn't want that? It is the right stuff to go with popcorns and an idiotic smile.

To reach the playing field, however, you have to first get past some packaged attitude, likely done to reflect MTV's involvement in the film. Largely in the form of clichéd urban music, Courteney Cox, lifestyle of the rich and a Bentley that gets amply smashed; once that is done with and former NFL player Paul Crewe (Adam Sandler) is in prison, you are comfortably settled in the belly of the story.

In prison, the warden forces Crewe to mould a diverse group of inmates into a football team. Getting them to agree is a tough task but their interest picks up when told that the match would be against the prison guards. With the help of fellow inmates, Nate Scarborough (Burt Reynolds) and Caretaker (Chris Rock), Crewe promises the convicts a chance to exact revenge in a showdown where anything goes in the name of football.

For those tracking NFL, the film has in its cast Michael Irvin, Bill Romanowski, Brian Bosworth and Terry Crews. More familiar to the audience here would be Bill Goldberg, Steve Austin and Kevin Nash, all from the world of wrestling. On the face of it, a casting concoction best avoided but the film surprises by keeping these WWF brands well under check.

None of them gets to dominate the frame as they do on television. Goldberg's scream and Austin's swagger merge with their roles while Nash even pulls off some comedy as an eventually effeminate guard.

Indian presence comes courtesy the 7 ft 1 inch Dalip Singh who appears as Turley, one giant of a convict. It may be recalled that Singh, a sub-inspector with the Punjab Police, was featured in the national media some time back for his pro-wrestling track record.

`The Longest Yard' falls in that genre of comedy where hurt is an object with pain glossed over. A broken nose, police beatings, punches, bleeding - all get this treatment with the characters bouncing back like cartoons. And there is plenty of it, given a rough prison, a rougher game and tonnes of muscle to hold up the story. Mercifully, as with the guests from WWF, Sandler, Rock and Reynolds also don't get to overdo their roles.

The film opens here on August 19. Its "time-pass" as Mumbai would put it. But perhaps first you should get that grouse and faces in mind, for `The Longest Yard' is all about giving it back. And having a laugh in the process.

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