Division III: Football's Finest Commentary

Following in the great tradition of football comedies that includes Wildcats, Necessary Roughness, and The Replacements comes a movie that can really only be described as odd.  Andy Dick plays a head coach that is hired for his colourful background to give a hopeless Division III team some life and recognition.  My first thoughts were that there is no way that the same guy who played Matthew Brock on NewsRadio could ever convincingly play a football head coach.  Andy Dick just doesn't have the Je ne c'est quoi to pull it off.  But, what you quickly realize is that the character of Rick Vice isn't much of a football coach at all.  Instead, he's an insane, dangerous, and downright weird character that you could actually see being Matthew Brock's crazy uncle at Thanksgiving dinner.

The whole film is less about making a football comedy and more about seeing what kind of crazy stuff they could get Dick to do.  And they get him to do some really crazy stuff.  From his rants that trail off to mumbling to the way he parks his bike by spinning it around and chucking it like a hammer to the absolutely comic genius of him chasing his players while on a bike and using a yard marker as a joust to stab at them, watching Rick Vice is one of those movie experiences that is utterly painful yet hilarious to watch.

Like I said, it's really not much of a football movie.  There is a bit of a plot and some half-assed character development with a romantic sub story.  But the film makers realized that any real attempt at building those up would make the movie terrible because they're using stories that are done to death.  So instead, they focused on what makes sports such an attractive backdrop for movies: hilarious violence and over the top characters.  And this movie has that in spades.  Ultimately, it seems like an excuse for some old Mad TV cronies to get together and be weird.  But Mad TV was funny when Mo Collins, Will Sasso, Bryan Callen and Debra Wilson were on it.  So getting them together for this is pretty funny too.  Throw in a little Adam Corolla as the play by play announcer and there's a lot of potential for some really clever banter (which is fantastic between Corolla and Sasso during the final game).

Technically, this movie is terrible.  But just look at the poster.  Do you really think they want to do anything but film Andy Dick being Andy Dick and make you laugh.  Because it does what it sets out to do, I say see it.