A hapless coach with a history of losing gets a last chance to coach a college football team in Texas. While there, he uses unique coaching methods and meets a wide variety of players.

I guess it was inevitable with the recent onslaught of sports movies that a studio would take advantage of the timing and release a spoof movie. Of course, it was no surprise that Fox was that studio. While THE COMEBACKS is not the worst spoof film ever made, it doesn’t rank high, even within its genre.

It’s a waste of time to critique a spoof movie in regards to acting, plot, directing or virtually any other creative angle on a film. Really, the only way to judge a spoof movie is on the merit of humor. In other words, does the film make you laugh? For that reason, spoof movies have a wide audience because there’s usually something that everyone will find funny. This one is no different even though the extreme rapid fire jokes missed more than they hit. I would say they crammed about 200 jokes into 90 minutes and maybe three of them gave me a chuckle. Hey, that’s better odds than a Friedberg and Seltzer movie.

I guess the saddest part about the film is that it has stolen the thunder from other sports spoofs. There’s plenty of fodder out there to make fun of and this one didn’t take full advantage of its available material. At best, they pick and chose individual scenes from popular films and then tried to make a quick joke. I thought too much attention was given to smaller films like STICK IT and not enough to bigger films like INVINCIBLE.

There’s no doubt that people will see COMEBACKS hoping to get a few laughs in. And there’s no reason to believe they won’t find something to laugh at. The question is whether or not you can suffer through enough miss-fires to make the few hits worthwhile. I, for one, did not find it worth the effort.

Video: Widescreen (1.85:1): Fox isn’t the best studio when it comes to video transfers. Clearly, this wasn’t a top priority for them and it didn’t look very good at all.

Audio: English 5.1 with English and Spanish subtitles: The audio was efficient.

Commentary with Tom Brady: I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, but you’re better off listening to this commentary than watching the film. He’s better than anything happening on screen. It’s a pretty good commentary with enough informational tidbits to keep you interested throughout.

A Laugh of Their Own (5:09): This is a quick featurette dedicated to all the pro athletes that made a cameo in the film. If you’re a sports fan, then you probably noticed them as they happened. If not, then this may be worthwhile for you. Overall, it was a little fluffy for my taste.

Heartland Hotties vs Lone Star Naughties (1:46): I don’t even know how to describe this. This features two fake cheerleading squads “facing off” with each other through cheers. In other words, this is a waste of time.

The Karaoke Kid (1:36): Jez Minda does a fake music video with the rest of the team. I guess this is kind of like a deleted scene. It’s not much of anything and wasn’t funny or interesting.

Coach Koechner (2:08): For a two minute featurette, there were a lot of movie clips. David tries to be funny, but like he does in most everything he’s been in, he just tries too hard.

Million Dollar Booty (1:00): Ok, you see what they’re doing? They’re giving you a ton of 1 and 2 minute featurettes to make it look like there’s a lot on the disc when in fact there’s nothing. This is a full minute of random girls shaking their butts for the camera.

The Mighty Dicks (2:32): Andy Dick is not funny and I don’t understand why he’s famous. This is him improving some lines as a referee.

Razor Blades of Glory (3:28): I had hopes for this since it featured Dax Sheppard and the hilarious Will Arnett. Of course, my hopes were crushed because this too was bad. I don’t know how you can make Will unfunny, but they managed.

On the Bench (12:45): These are the deleted scenes and these were just as bad as the movie. To be honest, if someone forced me to watch the movie again, I couldn’t tell you whether or not these were in the final cut.

There are also some Previews

There’s no way I’d recommend paying to see this movie, but like I said, there are worse spoof movies out there. Chances are good you’d have a better time picking up a recent spoof movie, muting the sound and then inserting your own dialogue.