By Ethan Stinson

During his one-year suspension from the NFL, former New Orleans Saints Coach Sean Payton assumed a new position as the offensive coordinator for his son’s sixth-grade football team. The youth team’s subsequent success and the controversy surrounding Payton could easily have been adapted into a thought-provoking, uplifting sports drama focusing on the highs and lows of the successful coach.

Instead, the Adam Sandler-fronted studio Happy Madison Productions produced “Home Team,” a self-indulgent, cliché-ridden sports comedy. Starring Kevin James (“Hubie Halloween”) as Payton, the film functions as a bare-bones adaptation showing little effort to do its subject matter justice.

Telling of a rag-tag football team’s rise to success, “Home Team” bears a cookie-cutter story that could have easily been told without the Payton controversy being thrown into the mix. Depicting an equally generic cast of outcast athletes and a savior coach,  the film feels like a regurgitation of similar, arguably better, sports comedies like “The Mighty Ducks,” “Little Giants” or “Cool Runnings.”

Repetition is also apparent in the various Happy Madison regulars who appear throughout the film, including Jackie Sandler (“The Wrong Missy”) and Taylor Lautner (“The Ridiculous 6”). The film is also filled with carbon copies of characters from the studio’s prior projects. This includes Rob Schneider’s (“Norm of the North”) hippy dad character, who bears many similarities to his “Grown Ups” role, while Gary Valentine’s (“Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2”) eccentric assistant coach character is greatly reminiscent of Blake Clark’s (“Toy Story 4”) role in “The Waterboy.”

Marred by its tired characters and a familiar cast, “Home Team” fails to prompt laughter throughout its entirety. Like prior Happy Madison projects, the film also relies heavily on juvenile and gross-out humor as its primary source of comedy. A particularly cringe-inducing scene finds the film’s child cast vomiting one-by-one in the middle of a football game.

Perhaps the most unbearable aspect of the film is its overall neglect of the “Bountygate” scandal Payton was embroiled in. Aside from it being mentioned in the beginning, the controversy is otherwise left undiscussed for the remainder of the film. This flaw is further worsened by a later cameo by Payton, which seemingly serves as nothing more than a way to sugarcoat the situation, given its placement within the story. Although the longtime coach is deserving of much respect for his accomplishments and tenure with the Saints, the film’s willingness to sidestep his controversial activity could be perceived as distasteful and frustrating to those informed about it.

Despite its many shortcomings, “Home Team” finds some redemption through its child cast. Despite their characters’ generic qualities and stunted development, each gives a charming performance that is sure to put a smile on viewers’ faces on occasion. The same may be said for James who gives a respectable performance as the once disgraced Payton, even though it reflects the actor’s comedic persona more than the coach’s actual personality.

Overall, “Home Team” proves to be a disappointing, lazily developed adaptation of an intriguing modern sports tale. Taking a formulaic, one-sided approach to the real-life story of the controversy surrounding an accomplished NFL coach, the film wastes any and all dramatic potential in favor of uninspired attempts at humor and heart. The greatest lesson that can be taken from this film is that Happy Madison Productions would be better off staying in its own comedic lane, rather than trying to contrive humor from actual events.

Image from Netflix via YouTube