Review of The Longest Yard (2005) by Angelo S — 22 May 2014

I waited TOO long to see this movie and I'm glad I finally got a chance to see it and boy was I not disappointed. It's funny, like a comedy should be but it's surprisingly inspirational for some reason and even more surprisingly it was heartwarming and I don't even know how to describe that, it just felt that way, from the way the music accompanied the beautiful cinematography it had everything in it to be a movie like that.

It also manages to tug at the heartstrings in one drastically dark scene that almost comes out of nowhere but it fuels the fires for the amazing finale. Adam Sandler was great and this was at a time where he still made good movies that everyone could enjoy.

The cast is delightful and diverse, William Fichtner is great like he always is and it's nice to see Burt Reynolds in it too. I like it when the remakes have the original actors in there somewhere, like Cape Feare.

I would have liked a better reason for Crewe to be imprisoned, though, and something to help the whole revenge subplot feel more powerful, like if he was imprisoned for something he didn't do, cliched but what can you do? It didn't matter a whole lot as the rest of the movie makes up for it and that beginning few minutes are forgotten anyway when the real story kicks in, if this is the biggest complaint I can think of then I think we are in good hands here.

I am surprised I liked this movie as much as I did, not saying I went into it preparing to hate it but I didn't think it'd be as funny or surprisingly emotional as it was. Perhaps I should have seen the original first as I'm sure everything done here is done much better in the original, as is usually the case but I'm glad I didn't because it could cloud my judgement but I'll be getting to that soon, it was great for what it was and I'm glad I didn't wait any longer.

Also, gotta love Rob Schneider and his two line cameo!