I don’t pay attention to sports movies often, or sports in general, but this whole “Super Bowl LI” movie was getting a lot of buzz. 

I saw it was free on TV, so what the hell. I got the friends together, broke out the meatballs and Oreos and watched it all the way through. 

Apparently, there have been 50 movies in the series, which screams lack of new ideas and it showed. 

The plot was predictable, the characters undeveloped and the pacing choppy.

In fact, let’s start with that — the pacing. 

The story was always starting and stopping and switching between the protagonists and the antagonist. 

Really took me out of the moment, ya know? Not very immersive. 

Hell, I couldn’t even tell who the protagonist was at first. The first act just dragged on with nothing really happening. Then the rival group, “The Falcons,” just ran away with it. Clearly an underdog story. The Patriots had quite the way to go.

But wait, stop the action now. 

There has to be a music and/or dancing montage. This one Lady Lady just took over after the second act (even though we’d never seen her and wouldn’t see her again) and sang with her dancers who all wore strange and oddly sharp clothing. 

How this got a G rating I’m not sure. 

It completely broke up the story and made the whole movie seem disjointed.

Anyways, the plot was your generic sports story. 

We never really learn who the protagonist is, other than this one Brady something guy everyone was talking about. Maybe if we learned anything about the characters I’d remember them, but what do you expect from another Hollywood cash grab. 

But I digress. 

The Patriots got destroyed by the Falcons until the fourth act where they inexplicably turned it around. Using plot armor, the Patriots waltzed their way into overtime. 

What’s a sports movie without a drawn out, dramatic ending? 

Patriots pushed down the field for the win, big applause, the clearly evil dictator comes out to congratulate the team (thought we were done with the teen dystopia genre, but whatever).

Despite the bland story, however, there were some decent moments. 

Some Edel-dude disappeared into a group of Falcons and came out with the ball. J. Jones pulled some ballerina BS to stay within bounds on a pass. 

Mosh pit on the ball at the end where it barely crosses the plane for a touchdown kind of makes up for the generic plot or characters. 

Mostly watched because my friends told me to. I probably won’t watch the next installment. I am being nice on this rating really, 6.5/10.