The Longest Yard (2005)

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The Longest Yard1 And A Half Out Of 5The Longest Yard is a misguided plot driven feature whose fatal attempts to install humor forcibly gives it away within few minutes. As one does assume, the tone is similar as any other Sandler feature does and so does the humor and characters offered in here. It is short on technical aspects like sound department, background score, editing, costume and production design. The writing is weak and relies a lot upon the adaptation (except for humor) and offers a very little fresh perspective to feed upon. The updated screenplay might be funnier in its own terms but isn't something that holds the viewers and the primary reason would be its sometimes cheap humor and ludicrous attempts to draw in the laughs fails on whole life. Peter Segal; the director, requires some more work on the execution skills for it is uneven and loosely scattered around varied sequences. The performance by Adam Sandler is decent as he draws out most of the laughs but his supporting cast like Chris Rock and Burt Reynolds didn't seem in their A game. The Longest Yard is actually longer than it accounts for, as the blurred out vision of the destination never clears up for the makers.

The title of the film is The Lomgest Yard. It is comedy. It is about prison. It is not a book. The film is seb in USA. The film is ser Modern times. Adam Sandler stars in the film. Adam Sandler plays the main role. Pool Crwe is my Favorit charakter. My family would like this film.

So as you can tell from the title this is a modern (for the time) remake of the Burt Reynolds vehicle of the same name. And when I say its a remake I mean its literally a scene for scene remake, but now a vehicle for Adam Sandler. The plot is identical to the original movie which sees Paul Crewe (Sandler) going to jail after assaulting his rich girlfriend and then going off on a joyride in her expensive car. Upon arrival in the big house Crewe is pressured/blackmailed into coaching the jail football team by the warden; but eventually ends up organising a training game between the convicts and guards. Crewe must battle his inner demons, pride and dignity versus cowing down to the warden for a safe but cowardly existence. Of course not much of that is translated across into this because its an Adam Sandler movie. Cue lots of immature toilet humour and sexual innuendos.The first thing that really doesn't work in this movie is the plot opener. We find Crewe with his rich girlfriend, living in her luxurious pad. Said girlfriend is an uncredited cameo by Courtney Cox who looks unbelievable gorgeous I kid you not. She basically explains to Crewe that she owns him, he is her toy, as long as he obeys...his life will be very comfortable. Who in their right mind would say no to this??!! And before you think about it, you all need to see Cox and the outfit she's in. No bloke would walk away from this scenario, I'd be on my knees begging to be leashed and collared! So straight away I'm thinking this character is an idiot for throwing this away (the hot girl and her assets).The next problem I had with this is Sandler and the fact he's just not believable as an ex-pro footballer. Admittedly Reynolds wasn't overly convincing to look at either but at least he looked relatively fit. But that's just a minor issue really, the real issue (as mentioned above) is the fact that this movie loses all the heart, soul and grit of the original. The 1974 movie was three things: an acceptable comedy, a hard and surprisingly dark prison drama, and a reasonably gritty sports flick. This new movie is a cheap slapstick riddled spoof, chock full of profanity and cameos mugging for the camera. The prison setting is merely an excuse for lots of clichéd predictable prison related sight gags and nothing more. There is no real tension or drama, that aspect has been totally jettisoned. And despite the sports side of things being much glossier and slickly shot, it doesn't hold a candle to the original movie.Its actually incredible to see the difference between the two movies when it comes down to the football side of things. In the original movie the game was very down to earth, nothing fancy. A brutal game of football in a very basic looking arena with no frills, it was believable. In this remake the game looks like something from the flippin' NFL! The arena is huge with all the modern perks, the pitch is perfect, massive crowds, sexy cheerleaders, all very glamorous. Clearly this prison has some money apparently. I admit I don't know much about American football being British, I do know American universities and colleges do have amazing sports facilities that far outstrip anything similar in the UK. But would a US prison have such sports facilities?As for the cast, well naturally you have double the big name cameos of the original, both sports and entertainment wise. Sports wise there are quite a few big football names in here, never heard of them myself so I'll just leave it there. Entertainment wise there are some cool additions such as one time action man (and footballer) Brian Bosworth. David Patrick Kelly is perfect as the weaselly snitch Unger, but criminally underused. Quentin Tarantino collaborator Eddie Bunker just about manages his role (he looked pretty old). And Crewe's right- hand man 'Caretaker' is played by Chris Rock; who spends most of his screen time making jokes about white boys because apparently that's all he can do. Cloris Leachman, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, William Fichtner, Dalip Singh (dude his HUGE), Rob Schneider makes his usual pointless Sandler movie cameo, and James Cromwell adds gravitas as warden Hazen. Lastly Reynolds plays Nate Scarborough in a cringeworthy performance that isn't helped by the fact his ancient character steps in to play as a replacement and manages to score a touchdown. Because of course he does. I can't single out any one cast member though seeing as they were all pretty terrible. Twas like watching amateur dramatics half the time.All in all this entire venture just seemed pointless. A chance for Sandler to mess around with his mates and call it work, and Reynolds needing work. What makes it so painful is the fact they've totally missed the point of the original movie by cutting the actual drama. Yeah there is some funny visual stuff sure, but you balance that with gritty tension of the prison setting. The only part they kinda got right was the death of Caretaker, but cutting back into infantile humour so quickly just destroys any emotional impact. Maybe if they hadn't aimed this at the moronic teenage MTV crowd (obligatory rap soundtrack...ugh!) it could of been half decent. But even then what's the point when the original captured it all so perfectly. And that's where I'm gonna end this, stick to the original.4.5/10

I've always held a special fondness for the 1974 version of "The Longest Yard" starring Burt Reynolds in the role of Paul Crewe. When I heard a remake was in the offing starring Adam Sandler I just groaned since I've never taken to his style of comedy. However when I saw this picture during it's initial release, I was rather surprised that Sandler and the film makers pulled off a reasonable remake of the original.In a lot of ways it's more than a remake, most of the picture follows the original script pretty closely with the expected updates for a modern audience. For example, the picture replaces football greats from the original like Ray Nitschke, Sonny Sixkiller and Ernie Wheelwright, with stars from the pro wrestling world like Kevin Nash (Guard Engleheart), Steve Austin (Guard Dunham) and Bill Goldberg (Con Battle). Bringing Burt Reynolds in for this picture was a well conceived homage to the original, and it was also cool to see Ed Lauter, the Captain Knauer of the earlier picture, as part of the buddy group that posed for a group shot on the golf course.One definite point of distinction here that you'll note is the size of the players and the guards. Steroid use back in the Seventies wasn't nearly as rampant or publicized as today, but with the wrestlers on hand especially, virtually every prison player and guard are veritable freaks of nature. The Richard Kiel lookalike who plays Turley (Dalip Singh) is a monster, never mind guys like Switowski (Bob Sapp) and Torres (Lobo Sebastian). If you wanted to build guys like this I don't know if you'd be able to.Overall, this wasn't too bad of a tribute to the 1974 picture. I still prefer the original but I'm a product of my times I guess. So if you're a football fan and would like to see the underdog stick it to the Man, this one does a pretty good job. And as an added bonus, keep your eye on that scene of Crewe in the hotbox - it's got maggots.