Formal Film Studies Shawn Gollnick Sports Comedy Genre

For my formal film studies I choose to do a mix between the sports-comedy genre. I choose The Longest Yard, directed by Peter Segal, Dodge Ball, Directed by Rawson Thurber, and Happy Gilmore directed by Dennis Dugan. 

The Longest Yard starts off with our protagonist, who once was an all-star quarterback with a bad history, is sent to prison after stealing his girlfriend’s car. The warden wants Paul Crewe, played by Adam Sandler, to help his football team by giving a couple tips to get an edge on the competition. Paul Crewe is not up for any of it and is only looking to serve his time. He soon agrees to help after the guards continuously push him around, and gives the warden the idea to do a practice game on the convicts. Paul Crew, still not willing to, goes through with the warden’s idea and assembles a team to play. It was once thought to be a game with no possible chance of winning, now aimed toward that exact goal. The only problem is organizing a team of crooked convicts who are focused on the game and not on the guards. Paul Crewe is helped by his advisors played by Chris Rock and Burt Reynolds, who played in the original film as Paul Crewe. There are lots of funny scenes throughout the movie and those who enjoy seeing big hits in football are sure to enjoy it.

Dodge Ball, a True Underdog Story, is exactly like the title says. Vince Vaughn plays as Peter La Fleur, a lazy slob who owns the local gym. Behind on his payments, he faces financial problems and is going to lose his gym to White Goodman, played by Ben Stiller. Him and his co-workers try to figure out how to raise the money until one of his co-workers mentions the dodge ball championship. Knowing nothing about how to actually play dodge ball, they enter the tournament and barely make it to the playoffs. The team consists of a bunch of characters such as a guy who thinks he’s a pirate, a guy who is looking for love through voicemail services, and a guy trying to redeem himself on the cheer team. His rival, White Goodman, joins the league to make sure they don’t win back their gym. The team is put up against teams with years of experience, but they are coached by Patches O'Houlihan, a once popular dodge ball player now handicap.

Happy Gilmore, played by Adam Sandler, is a man who grew up loving hockey but was never good enough to make the team. When his grandma owes the government thousands of dollars, he looks towards finding ways to earn money so the government can return her things and her home. When the movers fool around with some his grandfather’s clubs, he orders them to stop and go back to work. When the workers ignore him, and continue playing golf, Happy makes jokes as they hit the balls. When the workers give him the club he shows his true talent and recognizes a chance to earn some money. When he uses his talent as a freak show, a coach recognizes his talent and signs him to the PGA tour. They only problem is that not only does he need to work on his golf skills, but his anger management.

What seems to take place in all three of these sports comedies is that there is a formula that each of these directors use in their films. They first start off with the protagonist who has nothing really going in life, which in this case all three of the characters have. Next they are setup with a situation they have to deal with but they are not alone. They all have a group of people behind them and more importantly one mentor who sees them through the very start of the movie. When things seem to be going good for the protagonist, something comes up where the protagonist feels defeated and sees no hope for his cause. In this case, the mentor ends up dying and the situation they face seems almost impossible. When he realizes that his friends are more important, he chooses to not give up and stick with them. Normally there’s a rival or group of rivals that the protagonist faces and, in the end, the good guys win. This is a true underdog story. All that is needed is a cast of funny and familiar actors, to fill the parts to create a sports comedy.

Hollywood loves to add a lot of cameos such as Bob Barker in Happy Gilmore, Chuck Norris in Dodge Ball, and Rob Schneider in The Longest Yard. They donate little to the overall movie but add a lot to the audience. Their face adds more to the movie than just some random actor. For example, the main character, in the movie Dodge Ball, sits at the bar watching his team about to forfeit. When all of a sudden, Lance Armstrong comes up to him and gives him moral support which encourages him to join his team.  This not only adds to the comedy aspect of the movie but also adds to the experience of a popular figure people are familiar with. Hollywood also fills the cast with pop culture icons such as Nellie, a hip hop star, who is in the Longest Yard. Nellie helps appeal to those who enjoy his music and more importantly the African-American audience. Burt Reynolds on the other hand, appeals to those who have seen the original movie or enjoyed his other work. While Hollywood puts in these big named icons, they cannot do it without product placement. In each of the films they focus on one particular company they advertise. The three companies that they showed were Subway, McDonalds, and ESPN, which was shown numerous times. The last thing these films had were long drawn out scenes, where the characters were moving in slow-motion, which added  to the drama, or comedy aspect of the movie.

Other small similarities

A lot of the comedy routines done in the films showed large men put next to a much tinier man where it is seen as funny based on how they interact with each other in certain situations. A lot of women are portrayed to be a kind of sexual figure or eye candy for the audience. In the three movies, all dealing with sports, show a lot of people getting hurt which is what audiences want to see as comedy. 

                                                                                      

One of the differences in all the movies were the type of comedy used based on what was popular at the time. While all the movies had a similar style of how jokes were delivered, the references and people mentioned in that year differed. Some still can be considered to still be funny but some no longer credible, such as Lance Armstrong giving moral advice. The music is also used differently in each of the films based on tone. In a football movie you expect to hear music to pump up players and audience. When there’s a movie about golf you expect something a little different. There is not alot of differences between these three movies and share the same formula in the sports comedy genre.