“America loves an underdog,” Jaycen muses. “But you know who they love more? [People] who was born great. [People] like me.”
But there are few in America who would back up the last statement. Sure, Jaycen made it big in the NFL for some time—until his ego became too big for his gloved hands to catch. He started dropping footballs and missing easy catches. Eventually, he fell out of the public’s favor, too.
Now, Jaycen rants about the glory days to his 262-subscriber podcast while he smokes a joint in bed. His agent tells him that when it comes to public perception, he’s got a hate-love ratio of 95 to 5.
So when Jaycen rushes away from a meeting and gets in a car crash with a city bus, things only get worse. He’s charged with speeding, reckless endangerment and damage to city property. The punishment? Three-hundred hours of community service with the Long Beach Parks & Recreations Department.
In other words, scooping up dog excrement.
It’s in this humiliating position that Jaycen stumbles across an old high school hookup of his, Cherise, who looks better than ever. She’s out in the park trying to convince yet another football coach to not abandon her son’s losing team.
And that’s when Jaycen gets an idea: He can be the coach! He’s certain that pretending to care for the kids will not only get America to like him again but will also get Cherise to sleep with him again.
But it’ll take more than just glory day memories to fix this team.
Jaycen eventually realizes that he’s been a bit of a prideful jerk, and he helps to discourage a child who’s on the same path. He tells another player that there’s no shame in coming from a poor family. Later, Jaycen makes a personal sacrifice to support the team. And on a similar note, Jaycen apologizes to his ex-girlfriend for his selfishness.
When the team is discouraged, one player helps the others feel better.
We are informed at the end of the film that actor and singer Snoop Dogg founded a program called the Snoop Youth Football League to “provide the opportunity for inner-city children to participate in youth football and cheer.”
A coach tells his players to punish the other team “for their sins,” prompting his players to yell out, “Sinners!” He huddles his team for a prayer, thanking God that He made hard plastic that they can slam into their opponents’ faces. He closes the prayer by asking God to bless America, his team and “the nicer parts” of Long Beach. “When God is on your side, you cannot fail,” the coach yells.
Jaycen claims that the saying, “The blood of a covenant is thicker than the water of a womb” was said by God in the Bible, though there is no such verse that exists (though some may claim that Proverbs 18:24 describes a similar concept). Someone (who’s apparently not a Christian), says, “God works in mysterious ways” and crosses himself.
Jaycen says that when he was in the NFL, he was “more popular than God and worshiped in every living room and kitchen in America.”
The young boys on the team frequently reference sex. One makes fun of another for being a virgin before being reminded than he is, too. A boy on another team laughs at a kid’s high-pitched voice, and makes a crude joke about the boy’s anatomy. Someone yells that a child’s father should not have helped to conceive him.
Jaycen asks a young boy if he’s ever touched a woman’s breast, and Jaycen tells him to imagine the football like holding a breast so he won’t want to let go of it. The child asks about consent, and another boy says that his cousin was put in jail for touching a young woman’s breasts without consent.
Jaycen talks about wanting to have sex with Cherise, and the subject is referenced a few times. We’re told that he also tried to have sex with an undercover cop. We hear a crude verbal reference to oral sex. A man explains that his marijuana is so good that it could “make a nun get naked.” A coach says that Jaycen has gonorrhea.
We hear a reference to condoms, porn stars and prostitutes. A man and a woman kiss. Men and boys both objectify women many times throughout the film. We hear references to the male anatomy.
A man attempts to rob Jaycen by holding a gun to his head; but when Jaycen realizes that it’s his old friend, Kareem, the man puts the gun down. Later, the gun fires accidentally, but it doesn’t hit anything. Kareem later reveals scars from where he had been stabbed multiple times.
A referee gets hit by a football helmet, and we see him holding his face as blood drips through his fingers. We also later see him with a dog bite wound on his thigh, also dripping with blood.
Jaycen’s car collides with a bus, and we later see him in a neck brace. Kids get tackled and tossed around as they play football, and some are pushed to the ground when a fight breaks out on the field. A coach talks about dealing “irreparable brain damage” to the other team with football equipment. Jaycen slaps a child offscreen. We hear a joke about what sounds like a description of domestic abuse.
With regard to an opposing team, a coach tells his players to “slit their throats” and to place their heads on spikes.
The f-word is used more than 200 times, including nearly 70 instances which are preceded by “mother.” The s-word is heard nearly 130 times. The n-word is used more than 25 times. “A–” is used about 115 times, and “b–ch” is heard nearly 70 times. The crudity “t-tties” is used nearly 40 times.
Other vulgarities include references to male and female genitals, as well as “d–n,” “h—,” “p-ss,” “b–tard” and “pr-ck.” God’s name is used in vain more than 30 times, including nearly 25 pairings with “d–n.” People frequently use crude hand gestures as well.
In other words, since this movie is only 90 minutes long (not including credits), viewers can expect an average of about seven profanities per minute, spoken by children and adults alike.
Jaycen and Kareem smoke marijuana on a couple of occasions. We see Kareem hold up a bag of the stuff. We also hear references to PCP and cocaine. We’re told that Jaycen cheated on drug tests. A celebration dance mimics smoking a joint. A man insults Jaycen’s football performance, telling him to spend more time on the grass and less time smoking it.
Children drink beer in a montage, and they’re later referred to as “drunks.” They also feed beer to a dog.
We see a piece of excrement onscreen. A boy vomits after drinking beer. Male players urinate in Jaycen’s pool (which we glimpse from behind), and a female player is also urinating not far from them.
A coach asks his players what men do, and they respond by yelling, “Dominate!” A referee makes biased calls to help another team win.
Jaycen talks badly about poor children. Someone says that a man “drives like Helen Keller.”
The Underdoggs, in some ways, is your standard football movie: Football team is bad. Selfish coach teaches team to be good. Selfish coach becomes friendly coach through interactions with players. Team faces rivals in the championship game.
To that end, we’ll scratch off any points for originality here. But were we going to highlight anything in The Underdoggs, it would be the sheer amount of swearing that takes place before the film’s 90 minutes are up. To put it in perspective, if football was scored by swear words, The Underdoggs would be up by over 600 points.
And since The Underdoggs doesn’t really bring any positives to the table that we haven’t already seen in other football movies of the same general plotline, we’d just recommend watching one of those instead.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
