Too many F-bombs and cliches bring down Snoop Dogg’s football comedy.
My favorite Snoop Dogg movie of all time is “Soul Plane,” when he played the pop Huggy Bear. In fact, as a kid, that’s how I knew who he was and wanted to see more of his talents. And my two favorite songs from him are “Gz and Hustlas” and “The Next Episode.”
His latest entry “The Underdoggs” is a would-be football comedy that likes to imagine if “The Bad News Bears” was an African-American football movie. It’s also a movie about cursing and clichés, and even a message about family seems cheap. It’s the kind in which you need to smoke weed to relax yourself from its choice of vulgarity.
Snoop Dogg plays former NFL star and podcaster Jaycen Jennings, whose downfall leaves himself with a philosophy: “F everybody.” In fact, his selfishness and vulgarity has made him a has-turns, who turns his back on everyone. Blaming them for his problems.
For breakfast, he has his weed and cabinet full of Wheeties, which seems obligatory for a sports star to have.
His agent (Kal Penn) can’t get his podcast career on track, because of his vulgarity. I’m trying to get my radio station NEWHD radio out there, but not by saying “F LeBron and F poor kids.”
Through some crappy special effects and the obligatory F-bomb, he ends up in a car accident, which gets him in trouble for speeding and damaging a public bus. As part of his punishment, he must perform community service-picking up dog crap at a Long Beach park. That park also has a football field, where the kids are rowdy and are under the training of his former cheerleader girlfriend Cherise (Tika Sumpter), who is also a single mom with a son Tre (Jonigan Booth).
Jaycen decides to get his fame and girlfriend back by playing a football version of “The Mighty Ducks” with them. Meaning he arranges the program to make him their new head coach.
He also has an old friend Kareem (Mike Epps), who is a career criminal, looking for a place to hide out. His running gag is that he thinks the safety on his gun is on, but is off. He also applies his tricks as the assistant coach, and he also becomes the reason why their team name has 2Gs in Underdoggs. Because he has “2 dogs for 2Gs.”
But Jaycen is the one who decides to give each kid nicknames like “Titties,” “Headache,” “Mr. Magoo,” or “Superstar.” They even have them written on their jerseys. Should parents be concerned about this? Yes, they should.
And there’s also his former high school coach (George Lopez), who loves his coach enough to cover the damaged parts with duct tape and books to hold it up. Jaycen treats him like he’s some kind of Yoda, when it comes to motivation about getting himself moving forward, but it feels too typical and random to be uplifting.
Maybe I laughed once or twice or had some smirks, but kids drinking beer and urinating in the pool is too routine to be funny. And I certainly didn’t feel ticked when one of them pukes on a ping pong table.
Director Charles Stone III is capable of funny sports movies like “Uncle Drew” and “Mr. 3000,” but he misses the mark and doesn’t see his targets as targets. In fact, it feels kind of racist and negative when Jaycen’s team of black footballers must go against a team of white footballers (led by Andrew Schulz), and his tram having to flip them off in the end. Not every white person is bad, and neither am I. It’s “The Underdoggs” that is the bad movie. Snoop Dogg is capable of fresh performances, but his latest role is a waste of his talents, and he co-wrote this.
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