National Champions

National Champions

This is what you'd call a dialogue movie, and not half bad. The main gripes I have are wasting Jeffrey Donovan's talents, the horrid acting of the main character "LeMarcus", and the insanely bad overemotional acting on the black woman who was some sort of fixer. Each time someone questioned her she'd freak out, just waaaay overboard. JK Simmons as usual excellent performance wasn't enough to make up for this lady.

How sad that this movie is acted in by such great actors and score above 50 by any reviewer. Terrible dialogue and plot. I would be ashamed if I had any part in this movie, in front or behind the screen.

As a 116 mins long sports drama, I was expecting to see at least one game. But instead it was scenes in and out of hotel rooms with some soap-opera melodramatics and twists. I will say though, this did feel very real, and I'm curious if this story was conceived as a slap in the face to college football et al. The performances by all were excellent and captivating, especially J. K. Simmons, and the only reason I sat through the entire film. The ending was underwhelming, and I never did get to see any game, but the film was still unique and well put together. This may not be for everyone, especially if you don't follow college football or sports in general. It's a generous 7/10 from me.

National Champions was a great movie with JK Simmons and Kristen Chenoweth in it it was really good. I'm not a football fan at all and ended up loving this movie. All I'm going to say it was not as good as Dune, West Side Story (2021, and House of Gucci, but still very good.

I thought it was based on a true story. It's an interesting movie, and I hope student football players will eventually get paid for playing. The movie did a good job of showing how the industry profits from the free labor of students.

This is probably not that popular because it isn't about "a" game, but it's about "the" game, at least at the college level business. And to be fair, it does take sides, but it also presents both sides fairly well.

Bad direction; someone paid a lot of money for one named actor to front this bad movie and trick you into watching it. Was surprised it wasn't full of dream sequences, references to Pee tapes and imbedded commercials like Net Flicks does with beer, smoking and whisky ads.

What a complete waste of time. I had my suspicions when I was the only one in attendence at tonight's screening. Apparently, everyone was smarter than me, or was tipped off, to stay away from this one. In my solitude, I had the misfortune to witness boring, repetitive scenes pile up on the screen for nearly two hours only to cumulate in a truly stupid and unsatisfactory conclusion. Thank god it is now over and in the past for good. I can do something, practically anything, that would be a better use of my time.

This is a really well-acted drama that lays out the issues with big-time college sports as strongly as they have even been laid out in a dramatic presentation. The characters are extremely vivid, led by Stephan James, (who played Jesse Owens in 'Race'), as a Heisman Trophy winning quarterback who organizes a boycott of the national championship game to get players declared employees rather than 'student-athletes' so they can all share in the money being generated by their sport and its championships, (NIL is dismissed as something only a star like James' quarterback can get). Then there's the always excellent J. K. Simmons as the coach, who started in Division III and is finally getting a chance at 'glory', a word he uses a lot. And Uzo Aduba as a ruthless NCAA attorney who has a backstory of her own, which comes out in an extended monologue near the end. There's also various slick NCAA types who smile and know what side of the bread their butter is spread on and Alexander Ludwig as Jaems' roommate, who has no hope for a pro career due to an injury and comes from a poor family, one of James' motivations for his actions. The one contrived part of the plot centers around Kristen Chenoweth, cast against type as the coach's promiscuous, who is sleeping with, among others, the labor law professor who inspired James to make his stand. The issues are well explored: the billions the NCAA and its schools make from the sports, the benefits players get in terms of scholarship and accommodations, the risks of playing sports, especially football, how are the schools going to be able to field the non-revenue sports and pay the players, now NIL isn't the answer to everything, the economic status of the player's families, etc. The movie could easily have been a play. Virtually all the scenes take place in the rooms of a high-rise hotel in the two days before the big game, (the result of which we never learn because that's not the point). There are long, emotional, soul-bearing scenes featuring some outstanding actors. Don't boycott this one!