Something we’ve seen a lot in sports movies is an unconventional coach who inspires a ragtag group of kids to something greater. From gas station owner Danny O’Shea (Rick Moranis) coaching the Little Giants to get back at his brother to English exchange teacher Anna Montgomery teaching her students soccer in The Big Green to attorney Gordon Bombay coaching The Mighty Ducks and then Team USA (in D2) thanks to a drunk-driving sentence and a hockey knee injury respectively, that beat is a familiar one.
But those particular looks at this were decidedly family-friendly. The upcoming Prime Video film Underdoggs, starring Snoop Dogg as washed-up ex-pro football player Jaycen “Two Js” Jennings, is anything but. It does feature Jennings coaching a kids’ football team as community service following a car crash in a very Mighty Ducksian beat. Still, it’s definitely an R-rated adult comedy take on this concept. Here’s a trailer for it:
There are some pretty funny moments in there, from the rather adult-oriented metaphors for protecting a football (which even winds up on one kid’s jersey) to a robbery-turned-reunion to a reference to Snoop’s famed collaborator Martha Stewart to a Whizzinator reference. And it feels like this certainly could work if done well. And “From Blunts to Runts” is a great tagline.
This also has some connections to something Snoop’s passionate about in real life. He started the Snoop Youth Football League in Long Beach in 2005, which has produced many NFL players, and was featured in the Netflix documentary Coach Snoop in 2018. Here’s the synopsis for Underdoggs from a release:
Jaycen “Two Js” Jennings (Snoop Dogg) is a washed-up ex-professional football star who has hit rock bottom. When Jaycen is sentenced to community service coaching the Underdoggs, an unruly pee-wee football team in his hometown of Long Beach, California, he sees it as an opportunity to rebuild his public image and turn his life around. As Jaycen works to transform the foul-mouthed Underdoggs into top-notch champions, he reconnects with his past, including an old flame and few of his ex-teammates and rediscovers his love of the game.
Underdoggs comes from Amazon MGM Studios, Khalabo Ink Society, Death Row Pictures, SMAC Productions, and Panoramic Media Company. It’s directed by Charles Stone III, written by Danny Segal & Isaac Schamis, and produced by black-ish creator Kenya Barris, Snoop himself, SMAC’s Constance Schwartz-Morini, Mychelle Deschamps, and Jonathan Glickman, with executive producers Jeremiah Samuels and Anni Weisband. It premieres on Prime Video on January 26.
[Prime Video on YouTube]
