Al Bundy, Jack Dundee from The Best of Times, Uncle Rico, and probably hundreds of thousands of middle aged men across this country all share a common problem: They wish they could either relive glory days playing high school football or perhaps alter history on the gridiron where glory might have escaped them.
It’s a tired old Hollywood back-story, one born out of truth that for many, high school football is as close to that elusive glory that seems so distant to mundane middle age and middle class life.
Enter Touchback and its new trailer that debuted this week and has me shaking my head a bit. There are some things to like here with Kurt Russell in another sports role, footage where the NCAA and Ohio State has signed off on their trademarks being utilized (quite a rarity in film), and a handful of Hollywood cliches that seem to have been welded together to make what at first looks to be a pretty screwy yet uncharted take at the sports movie genre.
Below is the trailer. Your thoughts?
A first time director, a low budget, modest star power, and the interesting X factor of time travel has me oddly curious as to how this movie fairs with critics and at the box office. My thinking is we could see a total bomb here, but perhaps one that cultivates a bit of a cult following conjoining Ohio State fans, depressed middle aged former high school athletes, and potentially the contingent of those who enjoy movies that are so bad they’re good.
While there are some positive reviews on IMDB, the review below and the fact the movie has no Wikipedia page at this point leads me to believe Touchback may be as terrible as my initial knee jerk reaction to the trailer. From IMDB reviewer erstebangonzalez10.
“It was a really poorly produced film with a bad script and one dimensional characters. The makeup was terrible as well; there is one scene where we see an old Kurt Russell and the makeup is just so distracting. But the worst thing about this movie was the casting. It just didn’t work because you have some really old people playing High-school football players. I mean some of these guys just looked even too old to be professional football players, they looked like retired players.”
“In a year where there have been great sport movies made like Moneyball and Warrior, this was just one forgettable movie, and perhaps one of my least favorite films of the year. Director Dan Handfield is never able to deliver a believable moment in Touchback, and the script written by himself really didn’t help either.”
Yea, I’m not going to see this in theatres or pay money to stream or whatever, but perhaps one night when I’m bombed out of my mind and it’s on Showtime 12 West at 2am, Touchback will have its day of reckoning with me and I look forward to it greatly.
With that in mind, what are some sports movies you know are terrible but you for whatever reason harbor an affinity towards it? Air Bud? Ed (as in the monkey playing third base?) Like Mike perhaps?
Is there anyone out there who actually plans on seeing this movie? Please let us know if you do.
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