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Champions centres around a womanising idiot Marcus Marokovich (Woody Harrelson – Kate), although since Mr Harrelson is almost 62, perhaps he’s a bit old for such roles?
Either way, as is typical of lazy Hollywood, these days, it’s not an original film, and is an English-language remake of a 2018 Spanish film (Campeones), going by the same name.
After a few drinks, he ends up in jail overnight, following an inadvertent crash into a cop car, being 3 times over the limit. Having subsequential been fired from his coaching role with a minor league basketball team, the judge sentences him to 90 days community service with a team called The Friends, who either have Downs Syndrome or other intellectual disabilities, which leads to bringing up why it’s a 12-cert, because of the occasional use of what I can only describe as the “r-word”.
For the team, one of them, Johnny (Kevin Iannucci), describes himself as “your homie with an extra chromy” (i.e. chromosome), so, it’s a rag-tag bunch of players, none of whom is any good, but you know that together, they’ll find teamwork to get them through, and aim to win a big tournament match. From the start, it’s clear that it’s meant to be a feelgood comedy, with the most that’ll go wrong being another team members, Benny, having a nasty boss who won’t let him attend matches, rather than working in a restaurant.
Throw in a relationship between Marcus and Alex (the uber-hot Kaitlin Olson), who have previously met on Tinder for a fuckbuddy relationship, and Champions is affable enough, but very predictable low-end entertainment. Nothing major happens ands there’s no surprises. It’s everything you expect.
Plus, whereas the 93-minute movie, 65, was in need of an extra 20 minutes of running time, conversely, the 123-minutes of Champions could do with being REDUCED by 20 minutes!
There’s some mid- and post-credits scenes:
But, there was a big problem… and clearly, I’m the only one spotting these. Following the sound problem in Screen 7 with Plane, Screen 6 now has the same issue, but it appears worse. I saw Champions at 2.30pm in Cineworld Didsbury last Sunday, and while the front centre speaker was fine, for any music that would normally come in the left and right front speakers, it only came out of the right-hand one.
And when there were tunes played during the film, instead of coming out of all speakers, like you’d expect for a film which was putting them in to accompany basketball games, it only came out of the front right. Meanwhile, any sound FX like the ball being bounced around the court DID occasionally go through the surround speakers, so something was seriously wrong with that.
I didn’t bring it up while I was at the cinema, because (a) the more I thought about it, the more complex it was to try and explain in a brief summary, (b) I’d spend a lot of that time NOT watching the film, and (c) the Screen 7 problem wasn’t able to be fixed on the day anyway, and Champions wasn’t showing on any other screens, that afternoon.
I know that staff pop in for a couple of minutes, largely to see if anyone’s filming (and sadly, they didn’t come in at the time when two kids were running about the front row in the last 40 mins), but problems like this won’t be spotted unless a member of staff sat in a screen in a central position for 5-10 mins and a piece of music comes on.
Once I have a response from Cineworld, I’ll update here.
As for the choice of film, quite frankly, what I’d rather have expected is for Scream VI to have been showing, but it was in its first week, and Cineworld were doing their best to screw extra cash out of the punters by screening it ONLY in 3D, 4DX and Superscreen auditoriums, rather than the regular 2D screens. By the sound of it, the film doesn’t need any of those gimmicks.
Of course, while that’s in 2D screens from week 2, there’s other films I want to see instead. As for those higher-priced screens? They’re all taken up with Shazam: Fury of the Gods, and, similarly, it’s on zero regular 2D screens.
Champions is in cinemas now, and is available to pre-order on Blu-ray and DVD, ahead of its release on June 12th 2023.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 123 minutes
Release date: March 10th 2023
Studio: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Format: 2.39:1
Cinema: Cineworld Didsbury
Rating: 4/10
Director: Bobby Farrelly
Producers: Paul Brooks, Drew Locke, Scott Niemeyer, Jeremy Plager
Screenplay: Mark Rizzo
Based on the Spanish film ‘Campeones’ by: Javier Fesser, David Marqués
Music: Michael Franti
Cast:
Marcus: Woody Harrelson
Alex: Kaitlin Olson
Sonny: Matt Cook
Coach Phil Perretti: Ernie Hudson
Julio: Cheech Marin
Cosentino: Madison Tevlin
Darius: Joshua Felder
Johnny: Kevin Iannucci
Cody: Ashton Gunning
Craig: Matthew Von Der Ahe
Blair: Tom Sinclair
Benny: James Day Keith
Arthur: Alex Hintz
Marlon: Casey Metcalfe
Showtime: Bradley Edens
Dot: Barbara Pollard
Judge Mary Menendez: Alex Castillo
Attorney McGurk: Mike Smith
Himself: Scott Van Pelt
Himself: Jalen Rose
Coach Maya: Alicia Johnston
Frank O’Connolly: Seán Cullen
Blake Lassiter: Jacob Blair
Headband: Ryan DeLong
Bus Driver: Cory Wojcik
Mother on Bus: Lauren Cochrane
Child with Mother on Bus: Eddy Norman
Reporter: Stephanie Sy
Jimmy: Alex Hannah
Peter the ‘Ringer’: Champ B Pederson
Bartender: Jean-Jacques Javier
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.