Countdown to 5K! – #68 – The Best of Times (1986)

This is my 4993rd Review

Original Rating prediction – 8/10

“Come and get me sucka!” – Jack

Number of Times Seen – 1 (17 Feb 2019)

Brief Synopsis – Fifteen years after losing the biggest high school football game of their lives, a group of men decide to try and do the game over in the hopes of achieving victory.

My Take on it – This is a film that I heard about not long after it came out yet never really had much of a desire to see it despite the fact that it features two great actors in the lead roles.

The premise of the film is actually a very intriguing one and should perhaps be something that is relevant to most people yet somehow they don’t manage to get it to work properly here and that’s quite a shame.

Both Robin Williams and Kurt Russell are great actors but they both feel completely wasted here and don’t manage to find a way to make this film more enjoyable.

The overall premise of this film is actually a very good one since it deal with how people look upon failures of their past and want to find ways to correct them, but they don’t do a good enough job making this story feel inspiring enough for the viewer to really care.

Instead they give a pretty boring story that is too sophomoric for its own good and instead of raising the level of things by making this a drama, they try to make it more of a comedy but since it lacks much humor, I’m not really sure what the point of that was.

Bottom Line – Great premise that just doesn’t work at all. Williams and Russell are both great actors yet they feel completely wasted in this film. The overall premise about reliving events from one’s youth is a great idea but in reality it just doesn’t manage to be as inspiring as it should be. The story is quite boring and sophomoric and something that might have worked much better as a drama is presented as a comedy that just isn’t funny enough.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Robin Williams later commented that hiring Roger Spottiswoode as a director, a Canadian that was not extremely familiar with American football, may have been a mistake. (From IMDB)

Rating – BAFTA Worthy (5/10)