Champions film review — Woody Harrelson leads salty-caramel sports comedy

Woody Harrelson, the OG Caucasian on the basketball court from White Men Can’t Jump (1992), is back shooting hoops in the loveable if hokey sports comedy Champions. The concept, a rejig of 2018 Spanish film Campeones, is as simple as a scoop of vanilla. Harrelson’s Marcus, a professional basketball coach, is court-ordered to help tutor an amateur team of players with intellectual disabilities, mostly Down syndrome. Naturally, this hyper-competitive, aggressive curmudgeon learns to love the game again — and not just winning — through exposure to this adorable group of players, diverse in their abilities but uniformly big-hearted.

You’ve seen this story play out a hundred times and you know roughly how it will end. What director Bobby Farrelly, half of the Farrelly Brothers team that once brought us Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary, brings to the feast is a salty-caramel sensibility, willing to spike the sweetness with salaciousness and the odd vomit-based gag. Among the colourful ensemble of players, handsome Craig (Matthew Von Der Ahe) is proud to boast in reasonably explicit terms about his sex life while teammate Johnny (Kevin Iannucci) proudly introduces himself as “the homie with an extra chromie”. But having Down doesn’t mean he’s not sharp enough to spot something romantic, or at least carnal, is afoot between his sister Alex (Kaitlin Olson), a part-time actor, and Marcus. Arguably, the most endearing scene stealer is Cosentino (Madison Tevlin), a pint-sized vamp who can dish a put-down (“You’re no McConaughey!” she tells Marcus) with Carol Burnett-level timing.

Unless you have a heart icier than an Antarctic plunge pool, it’s impossible not to warm to the cast who are so clearly having fun, and that goes for the neurotypicals as much as those with mental challenges. Harrelson is an actor so effortlessly amiable and generous to his co-stars it’s easy to miss what a reliably fine performer he is. True to form, he establishes an instant rapport with each member of the team, exuding the kind of fundamental empathy and kindness that you can’t fake on camera.

Even though the plot is riven with clichés and as predictable as the tides, driven by a soundtrack of cheesy power-pop classics (especially Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping”), by the end you just want to hug everyone in it.

★★★☆☆

In cinemas from March 10