Any Given Sunday

Another Oliver Stone film! You almost know what you're getting here just from that sentence: lots of jump cuts and cinematic overblowing, men behaving like men and cursing like men and making fun of each other's manliness like men, conspiracy theories, and women who are either castrating bitches or whores. You might have also noticed from the commercials that this movie is about football. That's about what you get. The NFL did not approve for its logo and teams to be used in this movie for obvious reasons (everyone in it is either venal or stupid). The uniforms that are used for the made-up teams are the stupidest uniforms ever, absolutely disgraceful, and two of them, as Robert Kahn noted, involve Christian imagery to an unignorable degree, almost as if you expect that at the bottom of the league there is a team called the "New York Moneylenders" or something. This movie is a good ways from absolutely stupid in its criticism of football culture and how it is changing, but it's also a fair distance from smart, in that it seems to really love the excesses it is supposed to be condemning. (Something similar happened in "Natural Born Killers," which was why that movie was so terrible.) I wouldn't recommend seeing unless you've enjoyed at least one Oliver Stone film before this one, or unless you like the idea that the "AFFA" (what does this stand for? American Football Federation of America? Atlantic-Federal Football Association? What?) roots for Christian soldiers against evil heathens like the Miami Sharks. Also when is LL Cool J going to make a movie that does not involve sharks? It boggles the mind.

Attractive Man Count: 2.

Attractive Woman Count: At least 4, and I'm probably forgetting some.

Overall Grade: B-.

One thing I forgot in this review is that seemingly every time the quarterback is touched in any way in the Made-Up Football League, he fumbles. It's like watching Tony Banks for an entire movie or something.

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