Wednesday, June 1, 2016

It'll Be Better Than Space Jam 2

Here's my pitch for a movie comedy: You've got a professional basketball team, and they're really good. But the problem is that they're good because of team play: they don't have any big superstars. So when they get into the playoffs they're at a disadvantage when referees favour big-name players. The team owner (Samuel L. Jackson) is furious, and threatens the league commissioner (Will Ferrell) with exposing their baissed officiating. So they make a deal: the team will be allowed to designate one player as their stand-in superstar. The refs will treat him as though he's one of the top players: he never gets called for anything, it's a foul everytime someone touches him, he can flop and no one acknowledges it.

The coach (Steve Harvey) decides he might as well put this designation on the team's worst player (Kevin Hart.) But because this deal is so secret, no one tells the player himself. He just thinks he's suddenly become the great player he always believed himself to be.

The whole scheme falls apart thanks to two journalists (Leslie Jones and Andy Samberg) from the struggling sports news website Doleground. They figure out what's happening, and threaten to expose it all, just as the team is about to win the championship. When they corner the player with the accusation, he's angry that he's been lied-to, but still wants to win the title. So he agrees to expose the scam by winning the game in the most extreme way possible: tripping players, giving them wedgies, sneaking over and lowering the basket, etc. Then we follow up that slapstick climax with a tacked-on moral about honesty.

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