Movies - The Longest Yard

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	Movies - The Longest Yard

The Longest Yard was a remake of the 1974 movie of the same name. The movie features inmates at a prison who play American football against their guards. Adam Sandler played the hero, Paul Crewe, an ex pro-footballer. Burt Reynolds, the original Paul Crewe, had a cameo as Nate Scarborough, the head coach.

Plot

An ex-NFL player Paul Crewe (Adam Sandler) gets in an argument with his rich girlfriend (Courteney Cox), gets drunk, and goes joy riding in her Bentley Continental GT. After getting the car completely smashed up, he gets arrested and sent to prison.

In prison, the warden asks him to help with the prison's guard football team. After being roughed up a bit, he goes against his will and helps him. He informs the guard that what his team needs is a tune up game: a game where they play a team and "kick the shit out of 'em, get their spirits up".

This gives the warden an idea: Crewe will make a team out of the inmates for them to play as their tune up game. He starts off with a crack-job team, with the exception of Switowsky who lifted a small bleacher full of men (fifty times was his final count) as an exercise. Athough he is stupid and acts childish (he also can't read), he is big and strong. Then Crewe and Caretaker (Chris Rock) find a rating system on the criminals (up to five stars, depending on how prone to violence they are). After Caretaker finds out he's only half a star (then jokes are made by Crewe and the coach such as " we can have a pillow fight and sell it to E.S.P.N superstar vs half a star" (Burt Reynolds) they find some five star inmates. But after realising their team is built on power, Caretaker decides they need speed.

They go to the black inmates. "Cheeseburger" Eddie is the first to step up, but none of them want to join. So Crewe makes them an offer. Beat him at a game of 1 on 1 basketball, he won't bug them again. If he wins however, they join the team. So they play basketball and call their own fouls. They aren't playing fair though, and Crewe is getting the crap beat out of him. At one point in the game, Crewe actually gets punched. When asked if he was fouled he just states "No man, that was clean". After losing, they tell him to leave. But one of the black inmates steps up. He offers to be running back. The other black inmates are ashamed at this. The other teammates are awestruck by his running ability. In fact, he runs out of his ragged shoes. After the guards try to stop their running back Megget (Nelly) by trying to get him to assault a guard by using racist terms and making him pick up books they dropped on the ground the rest of the black inmates have had enough and decide to join in. The guards go to extreme lengths to stop them, even flooding their field, but they overcome these obstacles.

The guards then decide to do something about Crewe himself, and the scout for the guards plants a bomb in his room. Caretaker leaves a gift in Crewe's cell, and gets hit by the bomb planted there for Crewe.

After this, it's game time! After inflicting a lot of pain on the guards, the inmates catch up. The first half ends up tied. The Warden is mad, and informs Crewe that if he doesn't lose then he would be blamed for the murder of Caretaker. Well Crewe says (spitefully), "Fine, but you get a 2 touchdown lead and you coast". To which the warden agrees with, or so it seems. He tells the guards QB to get ahead by three touchdowns and inflict as much pain as possible. After they score three touchdowns and injure two players Crewe goes back in. Problem is, the inmates don't trust him. He gets sacked twice, then runs it himself. After losing his helmet and still getting the first down, they trust him again. They get back in it, but Megget gets hurt. The coach comes in, and scores a touchdown off the fumble rooskie. They decide to go for the two point conversion, and the win. They get up to the line and seem to be confused, and Crewe and Coach start arguing. After that, a receiver gets the snap and passes it to Crewe, who scores the winning conversion.

Response

As always with Sandler's films, despite a poor critical response (29% rating at Rotten Tomatoes) the film managed to do well at the box office. Its $47.6 million dollar opening weekend was the largest of Sandler's career and only second to The Day After Tomorrow
as the largest opening by a movie that wasn't #1 (it opened during the second weekend Revenge of the Sith was playing). The film would go on to gross $158.1 million domestic and $190 million overseas. In the age of a large amount of remakes being released at the movies, it's worth noting that The Longest Yard is the highest grossing comedy remake of the modern box office era (from 1980 on) .

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