ChiefsPlanet - Movies and TV Draft Day

Saw it last night. ****ing hated it.

(No spoilers below... I'll put them in tags when I do come across plot points)

The entire movie just seethes NFL propaganda put out by the league. They're capitalizing on one of the wildest and most popular offseason events in all of sports to make more money. I get that. Whatever. It's fine. I knew they'd get Goodell, Chris Berman, and all these draft figureheads to play themselves as well. That wasn't what annoyed me.

What annoyed me was the way they told the story to dumb down the product-- it's just more of the same from this shithole league. The story revolves around three guys the Browns are wanting to draft- an electric RB (oh the irony of the Browns taking a RB with a high draft pick) a pass rusher who loves his family, and a blue chip QB. Guess what they do? Roll out the human interest stories to give these players depth, and then match them up with Kevin Costner's 12-hour emotional change he undergoes. It praises humbleness and passion at the complete expense of logic. In other words-- it's reaching out to women and other demographics of people that just only kind of like football because they don't understand shit about how it works.

And I'm not just saying that as some nutty conspiracy theorist. Goodell gets onto the stage at Radio Music Hall to start the draft up. Guess what happens? The crowd cheers him. ARE YOU SHITTING ME? That would never ****ing happen. You go into this KNOWING the NFL had a hand in making this movie, but you never expected them to hit you over the head with this kind of bullshit propaganda at the expense of how events would REALLY go. This was an opportunity for the NFL to take the opportunity to laugh at itself a bit. It still would have resonated with non-hardcore football fans, but it also would have drawn in some appreciation from people who are getting sick of the NFL's shit. They didn't have to bring up concussions or anything like that. Just... boo Goodell. Make some of these owners look like real humans instead of gods.

Do something other than put out a dialogue of cheesy lines everybody has heard before. My god, the dialogue in this movie is horrifying. I swear, there's a moment when Denis Leary uses the "He looks like Tarzan but plays like Jane" line, and there's a PAUSE in the dialogue before Kevin Costner's line, probably because Reitman thought, "Let's give the audience some time to giggle at that clever and totally original turn of phrase!"

Oh, and did I mention the entire first half of this movie is a boring piece of shit?

Worst of all is the plot. Here are the spoilers:

Spoiler!

Seattle has the top pick in a draft with Bo Callahan, a guy they compare to Andrew Luck in the movie. They make it clear the QBs are Callahan and a bunch of shit. Seattle thinks about trading away the pick to Cleveland, and put Costner on the hook for 3 consecutive 1st round picks to get the top selection (Cleveland has the 7th overall this year). Costner really wants this pass rusher who has a great heart, and coach Denis Leary wants this brilliant humble RB who got in one off-field altercation. Cleveland also has this Alex Smith-type journeyman QB who got injured last year that Costner likes a lot and believes in. Well, Costner gets pressured by Count Dooku to make a splash (****ing please with the cliches) and does. He takes the deal.

The rest of the movie is Costner regretting his decision, having to face pressure from his girlfriend, Denis Leary, mom, and his own doubts as well as this stupid ****ing backstory about how his recently deceased dad is affecting him emotionally. As a result, he almost WANTS to be wrong about the blue-chip QB, and hope that there's some glaring flaw other teams have missed. He finds his stupid glaring flaw in the QB's character, his girlfriend brings up the Ryan Leaf trope, and Costner balks and drafts the human interest-laden passrusher at #1 overall. He gets back a 1st rounder ahead of Seattle and threatens to draft Callahan before the Seahawks do unless they want to trade back all the #1 picks. They do. Uhhh.... what????

I couldn't help but notice the jabs the NFL made at the expense of shitbag franchises like the Chiefs, Bills, and Jaguars. When Costner makes the deal for the #1 pick, guess who calls him up asking for their Alex Smith journeyman. YEP YOU GUESSED IT. THE KANSAS CITY ****ING CHIEFS. God ****ing damn it. The ONE realistic thing they put into this movie was a cosmic truth about the Chiefs and their aversion to drafting their own QBs. That's the one realistic thing. In the entire movie. THAT ****ing truth. **** you, NFL.

It didn't have to be 100% realistic. I get that. But for the love of God, try not to turn this into a flaming piece of shit. You're already making a MOVIE about the NFL draft, an entertainment event that involves people walking up to podiums and announcing picks. The setting is an NFL war room. You're already very limited in the plot points you can generate to make things interesting without resorting to tiresome cliches. Either you make the characters deep and memorable or you make it boring and draft-like. You DON'T mix the two.