Eddie Recap

Jamie

It seems like pure insanity that for a moment in the 90’s, as the big stupid blockbuster was on the rise, a whole mess of films were made that featured actual sports franchises doing real stupid stuff. In Major League, the franchise is the literal villain. In Sudden Death, the Stanley Cup is used as a backdrop for a terrorist attack. In Eddie, the Knicks are such a stumblebum, garbage franchise that they pull a fan from the stands to coach the team and are at risk of being moved to St. Louis… THE KNICKS! Little Big League, Rookie of the Year, Celtic Pride. There are a lot of them. I’m not going to say that this will never happen again… for all I know the Carolina Panthers would give their left arm to have a Marvel film use one of their games as a backdrop for Thor 5. But it feels like now the league and franchises will control more of the narrative and just wouldn’t let Jean-Claude Van Damme play goalie and beat up their mascot. Sir Purr would probably have to help Thor win the day and save the stadium and then become an Avenger at the end.

To recap, Eddie is a limo driver/Knicks superfan who is an outspoken critic of the team and coaching in particular. When the franchise is sold she makes an immediate impression on the team’s new flashy owner. Looking to bump ticket sales he rigs a contest so Eddie is pulled from the stands to coach the team. The coach, who hates Eddie, ends up quitting in protest and the owner happily installs Eddie as the interim coach. But things aren’t easy. She doesn’t have any respect from the team and basically sits silently while the team rattles off a horrific losing streak. With the help of the assistant coach she starts to understand some of the things plaguing the franchise: their big man doesn’t play defense, their star player is selfish, and other players are going through personal turmoil. She starts to connect with everyone and in a startling move decides to bench their star player in favor of a near retirement former star who makes up in leadership what he now lacks in skills. This is despite the fact that the star player has allegedly played every minute of every game that season and has not yet sat on the bench… it’s just solid writing. With that move they immediately go on a winning streak that puts them one game out of the playoffs on the final game of the season… a game against the Hornets, now coached by their former coach. Uh oh! To make matters worse, in a big ol’ twist (what a twist!) the owner reveals that he’s moving the franchise to St. Louis as long as they can win that one game, otherwise the deal falls through… again, just airtight writing here. Eddie is devastated and as the game enters the final seconds she puts on a protest, forcing the owner to backtrack on the deal and promise to keep the Knicks in NYC. At that, she brings back the star player and they win as a team. THE END.

I kind of miss these types of films. They are really, really silly, but it’s also kind of fun to see the NBA and the Knicks play ball on such a bonkers concept. I do wish that it was a little better written… at least from the sports point of view. Whoever made this appears to have little or perhaps no knowledge of basketball or how the NBA works. It’s fine since the film is trash and mostly just hitting the Major League style beats, but it starts to lean towards Sudden Death territory of unintentional hilarity. Which makes sense. There is nothing to this film outside of “let’s get America’s champion Whoopi Goldberg on screen and give the people what they want,” just as Sudden Death is merely a means of injecting pure JCVD. Overall it’s quite bad, but in a moderately fun way. As for Undefeatable, I had heard of this film regarding what was supposed to be a totally insane final fight. I think that was overblown, but the film is not a bad cheap martial arts film with some really funny plot points. The main bad guy is ludicrous, so that’s nice, and the whole thing is a who’s who of Greater Baltimore area martial artists… so that’s funny too. If you are looking for a fun cheesy movie night Undefeatable isn’t half bad.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Eddie and the owner, Wild Bill, definitely got together after the events of the film. The chemistry they have leaps off the screen and at a certain point Wild Bill invites Eddie to a very romantic dinner and I was like “here it is, here’s where he says he wants to be with her.” I was so convinced of their chemistry that I had assumed at that point that the conflict of the film would be that she is offended at the thought that he kept her on as coach just because he wanted to date her… but instead he says he’s selling the team and I was like WTF. So I conclude that they must get together shortly thereafter, because there is electricity between them. A heat so hot that it could only come from the actors actually being in love (which was the case). Hot Take Temperature: A 10 game win streak.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! What are we talking about? Are we talking about Whoopi Goldberg coaching the Knicks? Let’s go!

Hoooooooooooooooooooooooo doggy. What the hell is this movie? Like … who is this for really. I don’t usually subscribe to such derivative takes on films. But really though. Who is this for? Was Whoopi that big of a star that they paid a bucketload for NBA players and filmed in the Garden to get a bad sports comedy. A sports comedy? It doesn’t make sense.

There is something charming though about mid-90s comedies. This thing made $30 million dollars at the box office. No doubt a giant bomb. It made $0 overseas. But No Hard Feelings, which was a surprising success this year? Around $45 million so far domestic. That’s probably equivalent with inflation. Again … Eddie was considered a giant embarrassment at the time.

Oh one other odd thing, so far I’ve only been able to find this film playing on television once. Total. That makes no sense. It is likely false. But still, there is some indication that it really wasn’t played much on television in the late-90s, which is kind of counter to what I would have expected.

Jamie touched on this but it cannot be overstated how dumb a lot of the shit involving the sports aspect of this film is. Genuinely the entire roster and coaching staff would leave if Eddie was named the coach without interviewing anyone else. They claim the star of the Knicks hadn’t been benched so far this year, on its face ludicrous, but only more so because we know they are on something like a 10 game losing streak when Eddie takes over, were getting blown out on the reg, and his shooting percentage was something like 2-30 in one game. How does Eddie fix the Knicks? She teaches the big man to take a charge (absurd), the ladies man to love his wife (absurd), and the prima donna that other basketball players are good (absurd, again, he just lost 10 games in a row while on an aggressive cold streak, I think he knows there are other good basketball players around). And finally, no, you can’t just sell the Knicks to St. Louis. The commissioner (representing the owners) can nix the deal and force you out. You can’t just say “I’m moving my team to my hometown, they’ll play in the high school gymnasium.” Doesn’t work that way.

Even weirder? There were not one but two separate writers who did enough work on this film to get a writing credit who appear to be punch up artists exclusively for sports comedies. But … now you would think such a person would know sports inside and out, but I suppose if you need to punch up a diverse set of schlocky sports comedies maybe not.

I actually do think there is a bona fide Planchet (Who?) here with the dumb basketball player played by Greg Ostertag. Some weird Product Placement (What?) like Hooked on Phonics, but the actual award I think goes to Armani for the shout out when Eddie decides to buy a suit. Setting as a Character (Where?) since the film takes play in Madison Square Garden specifically for a solid quarter of the film. And definite Worst Twist (How?) for the ultimate reveal that the evil owner is evil and the Knicks just have to make the playoffs for the deal to go through, which makes zero sense. This is a BMT film through and through, what a weirdo film.

As a friend we watched Undefeatable starring Cynthia Rothrock just as another film with a female lead that played on television the same day as Eddie. Obviously, Rothrock is one of the martial artists high on the list of potential friends for BMT, but this is the first of her films we watched. Maybe not the best option in that regard, but still pretty fun. A who’s who of local martial artists, and specifically it appears they made the somewhat bizarre decision to choose a bunch of martial artists who specialized in Forms and Weapons (not combat), so there are a number of extended Forms sequences in the film. Pretty neat. The appearances of other martial artists outside of the three leads though can be embarrassing and kick this film up to a solid B+. Not a bad introduction to Rothrock. 

Read about the long awaited sequel in the Quiz. Cheerios,

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