The great thing about the young phenomenon of the Redbox chain of kiosks is that it allows you to make an impulse rental and gamble on a DVD. For the low price of a buck, something that might be a severe disappointment at 4 bones can seem like a bargain even if it's not a great movie. A buck is still a pretty low threshold to reach when you're calculating entertainment value.
Hey, did I mention I rented "The Comebacks" recently?
This send-up of sports movies did little at the box office, drew terrible reviews, and failed to impress me with its trailers or marketing. So why then did I rent it? It was a buck!
Actually, there are some funny scenes in "The Comebacks." I'm tempted to see Stacy Kiebler's suggestive dance number (a nod to the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident) is worth the price of a rental alone. But even she's not enough to make this more than a forgettable time waster.
The big problem I have with this movie is a trap many spoofs fall into: Rather than just be funny, or at least try, and rip without mercy the original material, it tries to be something resembling a real movie. By that I mean the characters have arcs, they care about things, and, worse, the screenplay tries to make the audience care about those arcs. In the end, "The Comebacks" is guilty of adhering to the same cliches it purports to mock, and that just makes it kind of dull.
Still, it has an impressive Stacy Kiebler cameo. And a rental at Redbox is only a buck.
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