Celtic Pride (91 minutes)
As kids we didn’t realize that there was something deeply wrong with the grown men we saw at Fenway or the Garden.
What’s your favorite “Wal-Mart $5 DVD Bin” movie? And don’t act like you don’t have one because I know you do. Mine’s definitely not Celtic Pride (1996), but it could be yours if you try hard enough. I don’t know what came over me this month, but I had a deep desire to force this movie upon my husband. Maybe in an attempt to see if he would still love me, maybe to be mean. We’ll probably never know for sure, but what I do know is that he was upset. Not Bushwhacked upset, but close.
Celtic Pride takes place during the 1996 NBA Finals, just a couple of years before the Boston Garden was torn down and in the middle of a “bit” of a losing streak. Mike O’Hara (Daniel Stern) and Jimmy Flaherty (Dan Aykroyd) are Celtics super fans who prefer to obsess over their favorite Boston teams rather than lead full lives. Somehow, Mike has a wife and son, while Jimmy is perpetually single. Jimmy makes sense, Mike does not. After a blackout leads to a dumb idea turns into a dumb prank turns into something more serious, the men wind up kidnapping Utah Jazz star Lewis Scott (Damon Wayans) to prevent him from winning Game 7 against the Celtics.
The premise is a funny one, but the execution is largely devoid of any joy. I saw a lot of reviews that called this a “dark comedy” but it isn’t dark as it is a bit sad. Listen, this is a movie I watched growing up in Western Massachusetts. It holds a touch of nostalgia for me, especially because being a Boston sports fan in the ‘90s was bleak. This was before just about everyone of our teams turned shit around and won a few important rings. As kids we didn’t realize that there was something deeply wrong with the grown men we saw at Fenway or the Garden. They were “the guys” and to see them on screen felt special.
That isn’t to say there aren’t some fun moments. A scene with Larry Bird, for example, still made me laugh out loud. It’s early in the movie and Mike and Jimmy are trying to convince Scott that they’re Jazz fans so they can get close to him. Their original plan is to give him a two-day hangover so that he plays like shit. As a part of the ruse, they have to trash talk the Celtics to Bird’s face. They do it, but are in pure agony doing so. It’s a moment where you think for a split second, “Hey, maybe they can pull this off.” I also always enjoy the scene where we see them enter the Garden for Game 6, as if they’re walking into church. That is something I do understand. And it’s a nice touch that in the context of the movie—these guys aren’t that weird. They sit amongst other super fans who understand them. So much so, that they entire section switches seats at some point due to superstition.
I go back and forth on why this movie isn’t successful, because the material is there. Is Daniel Stern a character actor that could never quite be a leading man (see above re: Bushwhacked)? Or is it in the writing? The script is one of Judd Apatow’s first feature length films and he wrote it with Colin Quinn of SNL fame. Some source material claimed that Quinn wrote it first and then it was too dark, so Apatow was brought in to lighten it up. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but what I do know is that it didn’t work. I fear that the movie got a “dark comedy” label because no one knew what to do with it. Tricks like that give dark comedy a bad name!
Listen, it’s easy for my references to blame the script on Colin Quinn and suggest that Apatow was brought in to try and salvage it. But I have my suspicions. Yes, Apatow invariably changed the face of comedy in the early aughts, but he did so through improvisation and allowing his talent to expand and extrapolate on his scripts while a camera kept running to capture the funniest moments. He’s a brilliant director in this way, but does that make him a brilliant screenwriter? I don’t know.
Anyway, instead of Apatow loosening up the stakes, we get a tonally shifty movie. Mike and Jimmy commit a crime but seemingly don’t learn anything from it. They’re never punished in any way (Scott becomes their friend, they’re not arrested, Mike’s wife comes back) and the brush with losing it all isn’t enough to scare them straight, as evidenced by the closing scene that shows them kidnapping Deion Sanders from a hotel room bed. The “lesson” they learn instead is that maybe an extremely talented basketball player isn’t such a bad guy just because he plays for another team. (These are grown men…)
Scott learns a lesson too, which is to be grateful for all that he has. Which is a weird takeaway from the kidnapping scenario, as he spends his entire time with Mike and Jimmy trying to escape. He also weirdly takes advice during the game from Mike, instead of from his coach (Christopher McDonald) who has been giving him advice for his entire career. It’s like Stockholm Syndrome, but worse. It also carries some weird racial undertones that even TV Guide highlighted in their review back in 1996. The undertone/lesson is something like this: a successful Black man should be humbled (and thankful for that humbling) by two white guys who don’t play the sport and who are kind of failures in life. It's every mediocre white man’s dream!
I do have to say that the best performance, and honestly the only part that really still stands up, is from Christopher McDonald, who plays the discouraged coach of the Utah Jazz putting up with a difficult star player, Scott, and a team that is nothing without that star. McDonald is best when he’s in a role where the character can hardly believe that his life is like this. Characters who have such deep frustrations with their lives, they can barely function at a surface level. And this is that role. He is such a bright spot in an otherwise shockingly bad movie.
This is one of those movies that I saw when I was like 10 and never again and it has absolutely not held up at all. I have good memories of enjoying this with my brothers and finding it so charming that there was a whole movie about loving our team. But a movie about the Celtics and only the Celtics just doesn’t do it for me anymore. Celtic Pride is like Fever Pitch without any character arcs or charm. And that’s saying something. I’ve linked my favorite reviews of the movie before, they’re more fun to read than it is to watch.
Also… I need to redeem sports movies now. I have some in mind for future posts, but share your favorites in the comments and let me know what I should write about next.
Review Links:
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/celtic-pride
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/film/celtic_pride.html
I'd like to hear your take on either Field of Dreams or Angels in the Outfield.
It’s hard to believe since I grew up outside of Boston, love the Celtics, and was living in the North End when this film was released, but I’ve never seen it! I remember reading about while it was filming and I was excited for it. Then I saw the trailer and it looked bad … and then the critics skewered it. I did the mid 90s equivalent of ‘Nope’ and stayed away.
But reading your review (even though you didn’t like it) makes me want to check out for curiosity sake! I completely forgot this movie even existed. And crazy that Judd Apatow and Colin Quinn (two people I greatly respect) wrote it! But a bit strange those 2 (both New Yorkers) would choose the Celtics as a subject.
One of my favorite sports films (and I don’t even much care for golf) is Tin Cup (also released in 1996). It’s funny and entertaining, but it’s such a great study of character and the ending is perfect. Of course it’s Costner’s film, but Renee Russo also kicks ass and Cheech Marin and Don Johnson are terrific as well.