Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

(1997)

SPOILERS!!! 

If this had been a stand alone film made by Hallmark, I might be more forgiving, especially considering it’s a made-for-TV movie.  But this is what Disney gave us as the official sequel to the 1994 Angels in the Outfield. My standards were pretty high.

Apparently Disney thought they could throw a couple dollars at this project and take a nice pull from unsuspecting grandmas who can’t tell the difference between this and it’s predecessor while digging through the discount dvd bin.

This installment focuses on American football if you can’t tell by the title. I suspected this would have spawned a whole slew of Angel associated sports films but this was so ill-received they (Disney gnomes) clearly shut that down quick. Too bad too. I think if someone wanted to put some effort into that concept it might have done alright. I wouldn’t mind seeing “Angels at the 3-Point Line”, “Angels in the Penalty Box”, “Angels in the Golf Cart”. “Angels Frantically Sweeping in front of a Curling Stone.” There’s plenty of potential. It just needs… you know… A BUDGET!?!

If this film had the budget to focus on a PRO football team and have some A-listers in it, it might have fared better. Instead we get a high school football team, Mathew Lawrence, and a bunch of other whiny teenagers. Beyond that, it’s almost the same plot as the first film except no one’s dad is coming back in this one. Not that anyone’s dad came back in the last one.

The dad gets killed off pretty early. He didn’t have much screen time and didn’t do much to establish bonds between characters beyond filling the dad role. The other characters don’t do much to sell their grief either. They skip several stages and jump right to anger. Boo. Not that I want to see these people go through all stages of grief. The least they could have done is have Dad gone a couple years before the movie started. That would have put the other characters at a believable stage. Nope! Time to go a-sportsing! Yay Football!

Then we have Christopher Lloyd’s involvement. I tried to look up why this film got the treatment it did. Bupkis! Aside from doing the voice of Rasputin in Fox’s Anastasia it doesn’t look like Lloyd was doing a whole lot in 1997. So his limitations here must be fiduciary. I swear it looks like he was present for maybe one day of filming. He didn’t even bother to comb his hair. Could he detect this rinky-dink production and just wanted to do as little as possible to make it an official sequel? This movie just makes me sad in so many ways.

We have the quintessential “let’s psychoanalyze this kid to see if he’s crazy” scene. The angels show up and they do angel football things and the team wins the end. Ho hum.

This did get a guffaw out of me though but it was not the reaction the director was going for, I’m sure. At the end, when Mathew Lawrence gets the winning touchdown, he has a vision of his dad and goes in for a hug. Very heartwarming, I guess. Anyway, when the vision dissipates we see Lawrence passionately hugging the goal post. It was supposed to be a touching scene but I just found it silly, especially with how little I cared about these characters and their poorly established relationship.

Oh! I simply MUST say something about the EVIL football team our team comes up against. They weren’t so bad as the evil hockey team in the Mighty Ducks but we can still add them to the roster of evil sports teams. That at least was mildly amusing.

This is a blight on what could have been an amazing franchise. It’s a shame. But there is hope on the way…