Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Home Team’ on Netflix, Which Builds A Kids Sports Comedy Out Of A Real-Life NFL Scandal

Kevin James is New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton in Home Team (Netflix), which plays off the infamous “Bountygate” scandal of 2011 and ‘12 and sends the disgraced Payton on a journey of personal redemption as the pee wee football team of his son, who he left behind in a divorce. There are lessons to be learned for everyone in this typical sports comedy, but since it’s a Happy Madison production, there’s also a helmet full of lowest common denominator humor. 

HOME TEAM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s two years on from the New Orleans Saints’ victory over the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV, and head coach Sean Payton (Kevin James) is slapped with a year’s suspension for his involvement in the team-wide bounty scandal that paid players to injure their opponents. Payton, who equates being an NFL head coach with going one hundred miles an hour 365 days a year, is suddenly stopped cold. Without a playbook, he wanders back to Argyle, the small Texas town where his ex-wife Beth (Jackie Sandler) lives with their son Connor (Tait Blum) and her new husband Jamie (Rob Schneider). The Warriors, 12-year-old Connor’s football team, are atrocious. Connor and Marcos (Jacob Perez) and a few other kids have talent, but commitment is lacking and focus is elusive. “Who did we lose to last week?” one kid asks Warriors head coach Troy Lambert (Taylor Lautner), and Troy can only wince and offer his encouragement.

It’s only a matter of time before Payton has been installed as the Warriors’ offensive coordinator and de facto head coach, and he starts to whip the rag tag bunch into some semblance of a functioning football team. Payton also makes a few cracks at repairing his relationship with Connor, who’s saddled with being a Super Bowl-winning coach’s son in a football-crazed Texas, even though he barely knows his dad. It’s even more awkward that his father has been publicly exposed as a bloodthirsty cheater, but Home Team doesn’t dwell on that.

Cue the sequences. Payton in his crappy hotel room, hashing out a new set of plays on a yellow pad. Payton standing firm against dads in the stands who are unhappy with his changes. And Payton leading the new-look Warriors through the “winning ways” sequence, as the kids put his blind side blitzes and speed formations into action to assemble a winning season. Finally, it’s all come down to one big game, the championship against their bigger and faster rivals. Can the underdog Warriors win out? Well, sometimes you have to sacrifice for the good of the team, which ultimately is a lesson that Coach Payton needs to learn, too. And sometimes, you just might barf your way to a championship.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? This gridiron has been tread on before. From the 1994 kids, football, and coaches comedy Little Giants, to the Bad News Bears – choose your fighter with either Richard Linklater’s 2005 Billy Bob Thornton-starring remake or the 1978 original – or even to Six Pack, the 1982 comedy that saddled stock car racer Kenny Rogers with a plucky bunch of orphans. Oh, and Diane Lane.

Performance Worth Watching: It’s notable how much Kevin James – known more for his buffoonery – leans into the arrogance of his character, and the chip on his shoulder about where his decisions have led him. It’s a performance that helps sell Coach Payton’s inevitable rehabilitation in the third act, both as a coach and a father.

Memorable Dialogue: The Warriors have a new playbook courtesy of their new offensive coordinator, and Connor brings the play into the huddle. “Alright, 42 long, I-formation wide, something, something…” Nobody knows where to line up, and some aren’t even sure if they’re on offense. “Didn’t any of you study the plays?” asks the quarterback. And one kid summarizes how tough a road to hoe this is going to be. “My dad didn’t even understand these plays.”

Solution? Schoolyard. “Everyone just go long.”

Sex and Skin: Come on.

Our Take: Bountygate, where New Orleans Saints players and coaches were found to be operating a financial pool that rewarded hits and injuries on opposing players, resulted in some of the most severe sanctions in NFL history and got Saints head coach Sean Payton suspended from the league for a year. The main character condoning a hit list against his opponents feels like a weird jumping off point for a kid’s movie, but nevertheless, here we are. For the most part, Home Team simply softens the playbook that movies in Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions tree have been using for years, everything from The Longest Yard remake to The Waterboy. Basically, a main character with something to prove wins out against considerable odds. But because this is a kid’s movie, the toilet bowl humor is in balance with the lessons learned.

The Happy Madison Players are also here for bench help. Rob “You can do it!” Schneider’s Jamie, the meditation and wheat grass-loving new husband of Payton’s ex-wife Beth (who is played by Adam Sandler’s real-life wife Jackie Sandler), gets into the act with the pivotal contribution of some awfully potent homemade energy bars. And Gary Valentine – Kevin James’s older brother, and a regular in everything from King of Queens to the Paul Blart movies – is inept Warriors assistant coach Mitch Bizone. When the new plays aren’t sticking, Payton tells Coach Troy to trust him. “I know this is like building and airplane when you’re flying it.” And Valentine’s Bizone fills in the rejoinder. “Yeah, more like crappin’ in a rainstorm when you’re buildin’ an outhouse.” In typical Happy Madison fashion, it’s also a cross-section of ancillary characters who provide a steady trickle of broad gags and snarky commentary on the primary action. There’s the front desk clerk at Payton’s Best Western Plus with a penchant for hard boiled eggs and whose only solution for a gurgling room jacuzzi is to “send up a fan.” There’s also Gus, driving the team bus, who relives his glory days on the field where he scored mad touchdowns despite severe jock itch and a cavity. Throw in a few thinly sketched parents and fart jokes, and you’ve reached the red zone for the championship game, Happy Madison-style.

Our Call: STREAM IT, but you should expect that for kids, the bits based around bodily functions in Home Team are going to ring with more truth than any lessons learned.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges