This movie is un-coolio

Eddie (1996)

Rated: PG-13

Runtime: 100 minutes

Stars: Whoopi Goldberg, Frank Langella, Richard Jenkins

Director: Steve Rash

Plot: Eddie Franklin (Whoopi Goldberg) is a limousine driver in New York, and a huge Knicks fan. Wild Bill Burgess (Frank Langella) is the new owner of the Knicks, and all he cares about is making money. Carl Zimmer (Richard Jenkins) is the soft-spoken assistant coach of the Knicks who keeps getting passed over for head coaching positions. The Knicks suck and all their players have off/on the court issues. Eddie wins a halftime contest and becomes honorary coach for the 2^nd half of a game. After the Knicks’ head coach resigns, Eddie becomes the full-time coach.

Rating—out if 5 basketballs: 0

Tournament seed: 16—movie makes the tournament only because it is an automatic qualifier. Has no chance of advancing. Avoid picking for any reason.

This is an all around bad movie. The basketball scenes are terrible, even though several at the time current NBA stars are used. They probably didn’t want to get hurt during filming, so they all play half speed and no defense. There are only three attempts to be funny in the movie and they all fail miserably: Ivan the Russian center for the Knicks keeps saying “Ivan make basket”; Eddie makes a bad joke about a player having a small penis in the locker room showers; and after receiving a technical foul during the game, Eddie grabs a referee’s toupee and throws it into the crowd where it is amazingly caught by Fabio. The Knicks start playing better after the star player is benched in favor of an aging bench player, but the star player turns things around after he is yelled at by his mom, which is good because he is called upon to save the team after the old veteran is hurt in the last game. Even though all looks good for the Knicks, Wild Bill has been planning to sell the team and move them to St. Louis. Eddie takes a stand, says “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!”, then stages a sit-in protest at the end of the game with a one point lead after a beautifully called play by Zimmer the assistant coach. Wild Bill decides to keep the team in New York, Ivan decides to “Ivan take charge!”, and the Knicks win the game.

One of the least funny comedies I have ever seen. Oh and I forgot to mention the music/score that made the movie flow like . . . I don’t know how to finish this sentence; Coolio’s “It’s All The Way Live (Now)” plays three separate times throughout the movie, and that is it for music. If you want to own the soundtrack, it will only contain that one song. Whoopi lied to me at the beginning of this movie when she said:

Eddie: “It just doesn’t get any better than this.”

Um, yes it does. It is when the movie ends and I can take it out of my DVD player . . .