Back in 2008 when Alex was freelancing, he had a blog where he reviewed anything he damn well pleased. The blog has since been purged from the internet, but I still have a copy of the Super Bowl XVII review because I thought the review was so good I saved it. Being that this year is a rematch, the review is relevant again. So enjoy.
Underdogging: A Super Bowl XLII Review
February 04th, 2008
Everybody loves a good underdog story, especially in sports. The problem is, it’s the most overused plot device in the book. A ragtag group of colorful athletes go up against a juggernaut (often a comically evil juggernaut, at that) and somehow, some way, defy the odds and come away with a skin-of-their-teeth victory at the last possible moment. This is what happens in every stupid sports movie, sports TV show, sports miniseries, sports radio program ever conceived. And Super Bowl XLII thinks it can get away with using it again, and doing a mediocre job of it on top of everything else.
The New York Giants are the ragtag crew in this one. Coming complete with the cantankerous coach with a tenuous hold on his job, the underachieving quarterback who can’t quite bring himself to win the big one, the aging veteran with the drama-filled personal life and a career full of missed championship opportunities (admittedly played with entertaining flair by Michael Strahan) and a scattered collection of emotionally unstable and erratically performing teammates, the Giants are such a half-baked unit that you know there’s no chance they’ll lose. From the moment they start to pick things up after going 0-2 in the beginning of the season, right down to their miraculous wild card playoff run, it’s so pathetically obvious that the league might as well have just handed them the trophy before the big game even started.
Especially when you look at their competition: The New England Patriots, a pretty-boy squad of over-talented players that haven’t lost a game all season. They bully opponents mercilessly in some games, and somehow find ways to pull out miraculous wins in games they’re behind in. They seem unstoppable. The quarterback is the king of the world, dating supermodels and throwing touchdown pases like they were going out of style. His top receiver is a showboating malcontent that pulls out spectacular plays that make every highlight reel. The defense is mean and dirty, the way only an anonymously evil defense can be. The coach is a scowling, uncaring, hoodie sporting ghoul, who looks like he’d sooner put an opposing coach in a chokehold and drag him back to his lair to torture him for information than shake his hand. For years this posse has been collecting championships like novelty belt buckles. They know every dirty trick in the book, and even have a fun little “cheating” scandal hanging over their head. Of course they’re going to lose.
There’s really no good way to make a set-up like this work yet again. It’s been done, and done to death. Nevermind the brutal miscasting. Tom Brady as the evil QB? Seriously? The guy couldn’t play evil if you stuck a pair of devil horns on him and had him slap around a nun. Eli Manning as the underachiever makes sense, but his miraculous comeback in this story simply isn’t believable. Watching him dart around like he’s Michael Vick as scores of Patriot defenders swarm his personal space is like putting Opie in a UFC fight against Jens Pulver and expecting him to win. There’s no plausibility to it. He’s not Willie Beamen. He’s not Shane Falco. Hell, he’s not even Scott Bakula in Necessary Roughness.
And yet all the same, Super Bowl XLII expects you to swallow this old chestnut like it was something special. Ho hum. Please. You want unpredictability? You want excitement? Change things up. Don’t paint the opposing team so patently evil. Don’t make everything so black and white. Don’t make it all come down to the last drive, the last pass, the last possible second. Play it like it wasn’t just another hastily cobbled together piece of sports underdog nonsense, where the team “nobody” expects to win does just that. What if, for once, the team that could achieve perfection actually does it? Having some motley crew of miscreants play spoiler is so overdone.
To be fair, there are moments in Super Bowl XLII where you can’t help but feel a bit of thrill. Regardless of how the plot plays out, seeing some of those spectacular last-gasp plays can’t help but elicit a bit of excitement from time to time. It’s just too bad those moments of excitement are wrapped in such a boilerplate and predictable storyline.
Super Bowl XLII is ultimately watchable, even if it does take forever to build to its inevitable conclusion. Just don’t expect anything fresh or unique about this one. It hits every note like it’s working off a sports story Mad Libs tablet, and leaves any measure of originality on the cutting room floor. If all you want is another corny genre-exercise, then by all means, give it a watch. Me? I’ll stick with my copy of Super Bowl XXXVII, thank you very much. At least that one kept you guessing.
5 out of 10
Hopefully we get a review of the sequel.
