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The Comebacks

  • 2007
  • PG-13
  • 1h 24m
IMDb RATING
4.3/10
12K
YOUR RATING
David Koechner in The Comebacks (2007)
The Comebacks - Trailer
Play trailer1:53
14 Videos
25 Photos
ParodySatireComedySport

A comedy that spoofs inspirational sports movies, this movie is about an out-of-luck coach who drives a rag-tag bunch of college misfits towards the football championship.A comedy that spoofs inspirational sports movies, this movie is about an out-of-luck coach who drives a rag-tag bunch of college misfits towards the football championship.A comedy that spoofs inspirational sports movies, this movie is about an out-of-luck coach who drives a rag-tag bunch of college misfits towards the football championship.

  • Director
    • Tom Brady
  • Writers
    • Ed Yeager
    • Joey Gutierrez
    • John Aboud
  • Stars
    • David Koechner
    • Robert Ri'chard
    • Carl Weathers
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    4.3/10
    12K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Tom Brady
    • Writers
      • Ed Yeager
      • Joey Gutierrez
      • John Aboud
    • Stars
      • David Koechner
      • Robert Ri'chard
      • Carl Weathers
    • 54User reviews
    • 47Critic reviews
    • 25Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 nomination total

    Videos14

    The Comebacks
    Trailer 1:53
    The Comebacks
    The Comebacks: A Laugh Of Their Own (Exclusive)
    Clip 1:51
    The Comebacks: A Laugh Of Their Own (Exclusive)
    The Comebacks: A Laugh Of Their Own (Exclusive)
    Clip 1:51
    The Comebacks: A Laugh Of Their Own (Exclusive)
    The Comebacks: Clip 9
    Clip 1:09
    The Comebacks: Clip 9
    The Comebacks: Clip 6
    Clip 0:36
    The Comebacks: Clip 6
    The Comebacks: Clip 3
    Clip 0:37
    The Comebacks: Clip 3
    The Comebacks: Clip 8
    Clip 0:16
    The Comebacks: Clip 8

    Photos25

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    + 19
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    Top cast99+

    Edit
    David Koechner
    David Koechner
    • Lambeau "Coach" Fields
    Robert Ri'chard
    Robert Ri'chard
    • Aseel Tare
    Carl Weathers
    Carl Weathers
    • Freddie Wiseman
    Melora Hardin
    Melora Hardin
    • Barb Fields
    Matthew Lawrence
    Matthew Lawrence
    • Lance Truman
    Brooke Nevin
    Brooke Nevin
    • Michelle Fields
    Nick Searcy
    Nick Searcy
    • Mr. Truman
    George Back
    • Buddy Boy
    Noureen DeWulf
    Noureen DeWulf
    • Jizminder Featherfoot
    Jesse Garcia
    Jesse Garcia
    • Jorge Juanson
    Jackie Long
    Jackie Long
    • Trotter
    Martin Spanjers
    Martin Spanjers
    • Randy Randinger
    Jermaine Williams
    Jermaine Williams
    • IPod
    Finesse Mitchell
    Finesse Mitchell
    • Titans Coach
    Will Arnett
    Will Arnett
    • Mailman
    Dax Shepard
    Dax Shepard
    • Sheriff
    Bradley Cooper
    Bradley Cooper
    • Cowboy
    Jon Gries
    Jon Gries
    • Barber
    • Director
      • Tom Brady
    • Writers
      • Ed Yeager
      • Joey Gutierrez
      • John Aboud
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews54

    4.312.2K
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    Featured reviews

    Gordon-11

    Silly and ridiculous

    This film is about a loser coach who coaches a team with the aim to win the championship.

    "The Comebacks" tells how an unconventional coach trains and inspires a team of misfits to victory. The individual characters are funny at times, and there are quite a few one liners that made me laugh. However, there is not enough to carry to whole film, maybe it's because I do not watch that many sports films and can't spot the references.

    I got rather annoyed by the never ending product placement. There are constant ads for a certain fizzy drink, and there is even a character named iPod?! Dancing the iPod shuffle? And the players have to think outside the XBox? That just became so ridiculous.

    "The Comebacks" is silly and ridiculous, but that's what spoof movies are about. At least it is what it says on the tin.
    4chrichtonsworld

    Not a complete disaster! Can be enjoyable if you are in the right mood!

    It was only a matter of time that a spoof would be made of sports movies! And there are plenty of movies to be spotted which are made fun off. But the biggest problem I had was the fact that it stays with recognizing movies. The director and writers of "The Comebacks" somehow forget to get creative. While I must admit that I laughed at certain scenes,"The Comebacks" could have been so much funnier. The actors forget to deliver their lines seriously and have a straight face throughout the movie. A spoof demands this and that is the main reason why silly jokes work in movies like this. Because of the failure of the cast to do so the jokes never hit their mark. Some scenes take forever and normally in spoofs that doesn't have to be a problem. Take "Naked Gun" for instance. Their is always something happening on screen. In "The Comebacks" they didn't even bother to let stuff happening in the background. Only a couple of factors make this movie worth watching! It still is fun to spot the movies that are made fun off. And Jermaine Williams as Ipod. His parody on Cuba Gooding Jr. as Radio was hilarious! He seemed to be the only one in the cast to get the idea of what a spoof is about. Not entirely bad!
    2MartianOctocretr5

    Another black eye for the spoof genre

    The spoof genre, which has lacked creativity and humor for some time already, gets spat upon yet again by hacks with no talent. No point, no fun, no originality; just a few cheap bucks for the film makers.

    It takes more than just referencing some recent movies and giving characters double-meaning names to be satire; to make people laugh. Any clod can pick up a cam-corder, and have some bad-acting buddies in cheap costumes imitate somebody. Since the genre being targeted this time is inspirational sports movies, there are a few lame references thrown out to movies of that type: the jokes are so weak the characters actually have to emphasize the references in various ways, to get you to laugh hysterically. It doesn't work.

    That's not comedy. However, the same old worn out sophomoric "jokes" ripped off from a middle school washroom (done even more blandly than usual) are all here. If that's not enough, there's a running "gag" of a bus running somebody over. So funny, right? Also, one pathetically poor scene does more product placement than Michael Bay; again with the same unfunny results. A musical bit flops miserably. Pity Carl Weathers, once Apollo Creed in the Rocky series, now stuck with roles in swill like this.

    Lousy beyond words. Watching a snail run the marathon would be less tedious than watching this film is. Probably a lot funnier, too.
    1keiichi73

    Another sad spoof

    I lay the blame for The Comebacks on anyone who enjoyed Date Movie and Epic Movie. You people encouraged the Fox studio to keep on churning out desperate parody films, and now we're faced with what just may be the laziest and most desperate one of them all. The Comebacks barely qualifies as a parody. Heck, it barely qualifies as a movie. This is a comedy in theory, but not in execution. No one, not even the people involved with this mess, could have possibly fooled themselves into thinking they were making a funny movie. Director Tom Brady (The Hot Chick) has made something truly wretched here.

    The plot, if you can even call it that, centers on a man named Lambeau Fields (David Koechner). Right when I heard his name within the first couple seconds of the film, I knew I was in for a long movie. Funny names are seldom funny, and become even less funny the more you hear them. Lambeau is one of the worst coaches in the world, but he's been given another chance by his best friend, Freddie Wiseman (Carl Weathers), to coach a ragtag high school football team called The Comebacks. Lambeau must not only lead the team to victory, but also teach them the ways of inspirational sports movie clichés. He expects his kids to have poor grades and problems with alcohol, and ridicules them when they don't. When it looks like the team has a chance to play at the big championship Toilet Bowl game (Did 10-year-olds write this script?), Lambeau is shocked to discover that Freddie is the coach of the big rival team that his team will be playing against. Turns out Freddie only encouraged Lambeau to take the coaching job, because he wanted The Comebacks to lose.

    The Comebacks is a movie so forced and pathetic, I almost had a hard time believing what I was watching. Spoof movies have recently turned into a game of "spot the movie reference", and this continues the tradition. It tries to squeeze in as many references to other sports movies as it can, but it either does absolutely nothing with them, expecting us to just point at the screen and laugh out of familiarity, or it attempts to be funny and falls flat on its face. Some of the films referenced include Field of Dreams, Bend it Like Beckham, Rocky Balboa, Friday Night Lights, Stick It, Radio, Miracle, Remember the Titans, Gridiron Gang, Invincible, and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. But wait, wasn't Dodgeball already a parody of inspirational sports movies? So, in other words, we're watching a parody of a parody of inspirational sports movies. If that makes any sense to you, you're just the audience this movie is looking for. Some of these films are referenced in the plot, and some (like the Rocky one) are just thrown in for no reason, because the filmmakers wanted to try to reference as many films as possible. There are some that the movie even feels the need to explain to us in its dialogue, just in case we've missed the obvious reference. You know a movie is in trouble when it has to spell out its own jokes to us.

    The worst thing is that the screenplay by TV veterans and first time screen writers, Ed Yeager and Joey Gutierrez, doesn't even know the first and most important rule of parody - You have to play it straight. The actors have to pretend they're not in on the joke. The reason why the classic Zucker Brothers movies like Airplane, Top Secret, and The Naked Gun are remembered so fondly is because they cast serious actors like Leslie Nielsen (yes, he was a serious actor before he turned to comedy) and Robert Stack, and then threw them into ridiculous situations. What made it funny is that they acted like they weren't in a comedy, and kept a stone face to the weirdness around them. Those films wouldn't have worked if they played their roles broadly. The Comebacks proves this, as all the actors are forced to play their roles so goofy, it's like they're screaming at us to laugh. David Koechner keeps on flailing his arms, bulging his eyes, and screaming at the top of his lungs to the point he looks like someone who knows he's trapped in a dead-end comedy, and just tries too hard to pretend he's having a good time. The movie also doesn't understand the art of celebrity cameos (also an important factor when it comes to parody films). What kind of cameos do we get in The Comebacks? Andy Dick and Dennis Rodman.

    By the time the movie throws in an out of nowhere and extremely pointless cast musical number to Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" for absolutely no reason whatsoever, I was just about ready to walk out the theater door. I was the only person at my screening, and the thought of this movie going on its pathetic way to a completely empty house kind of appealed to me. I did sit through the rest of The Comebacks, and I was not rewarded for my efforts. The sad thing is, Fox is not yet done killing the spoof genre. They have a parody of 300 coming out next year called Meet the Spartans. I'd say it can't be much worse than this, but I've seen the trailer, and I wouldn't want to get your hopes up.
    5flamethrower72

    This is what I personally think.

    OK. When I saw the trailer, I though it would be so stupid. But when I saw it, I was wrong. About the first 40-45 minutes was pretty good, but after that, it just got old and not too funny. The acting was OK. It was a somewhat good cast and your average spoof movie. Some parts they tried to make you laugh, and it didn't. Another downfall was the movie was sort of predictable. To me in my personal opinion, this is one of the better spoof movies I have ever seen. I don't see why everybody keeps bombing this movie. Most of you just rated it a 1/10 because when you saw the trailer, you thought it would be stupid and gave it a bad rating without even seeing it. So to me, I would wait for the DVD to come out and just buy the DVD. This movie is actually good if you go to see it. So overall, I give "the comebacks" a 5/10.

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Not screened for critics.
    • Goofs
      Bill Buckner was looking left toward the dugout, since the game was in New York he would be looking into the New York Mets dugout not the Boston Red Sox.
    • Quotes

      Vince: Hey coach. Name is Vince. I'm just a bartender from Philly whose only dream is to play ball. It's all I got left after I lost my job teaching, and my wife left me. Like my alcoholic father used to say before he passed on, "A man can only take so much failure!" I'll give you everything I got. What do you say coach?

      Lambeau "Coach" Fields: I say you can add "Did not make the football team" to your list of woes.

    • Alternate versions
      Unrated Version On home video there is a much longer version that has several new scenes, reedited scenes and different angles.
    • Connections
      Featured in WatchMojo: Top 10 Hit by a Bus Scenes in Movies (2016)
    • Soundtracks
      Back Move
      Written by Kwamé (as Kwamé B. Holland)

      Performed by Kwamé

      Courtesy of Make Noise! Inc.

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    FAQ20

    • How long is The Comebacks?Powered by Alexa
    • What are the differences between the theatrical version and the Unrated version of the movie?

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • October 19, 2007 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Sports Movie
    • Filming locations
      • California State University - 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton, California, USA(football game at end of movie)
    • Production companies
      • Fox Atomic
      • Tapestry Films
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $20,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $13,349,927
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $5,554,594
      • Oct 21, 2007
    • Gross worldwide
      • $13,539,154
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 24 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • DTS
      • Dolby Digital
      • SDDS
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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