Fine for kids, not one of my favorite underdog flicks
“Little Giants” isn’t all that offensive and it’s sad how many people, mainly kids who grew up with it, hold it in some high regard for that reason. In truth it’s not really a football movie, or much of a movie at all. But it knows how to play the angles; it’s cute, its humor caters to the smallest of children, and it moves. From there, the rest is all auto-pilot with a mix of contrivance and cliches.
It also casts two comic actors and does very little with them. Rick Moranis and Ed O’Neill are Danny and Kevin, two brothers who have been competing with one another since they were kids. Kevin got most of the sports glory, Danny was always a geek in his brother’s shadow.
His daughter Becky (Shawna Waldron) has the football prowess in the family but being that Uncle Kev is a misogynist, Uncle Kev denies her a chance to play on his Peewee Team. But Becky wants to play and Danny wants to show up his brother so they decide to form a team of their own, challenging the Cowboys to a game that will determine which team gets to represent their town.
You would have to look hard to try and find any real human drama in this one and I think maybe i’m reaching here but Becky, Waldron, may be the standout. In that I would think her plight- one of a girl torn between a love of sports and wanting to be attractive to the hunky QB on her team- has a bit of real feeling to it. You also have to love any scene that features John Madden, emerging from his big bus, to impart some football wisdom. The cameos from Emmitt Smith, Bruce Smith, and Tim Brown are nice too, but they’re no match for the always jovial Madden.
The rest of Giants players are the usual stock characters: the fat kid with flatulence problems, some nerds, minorities, and gawky weirdos who suck at sports, can’t function as a team, but joke around with each other and eventually learn to grow as a team. Not one has much to offer besides their one-dimensional personality and what they offer to the plot but they’re not totally mirthless- especially the gawky one.
Moronis and O’Neill aren’t really given much. One is eager to please, one is arrogant, it’s safe to say both will come to terms in the end but the movie doesn’t offer them much time to flesh out this relationship before then. And with cartoonish jokes like O’Neill missing a tackle, falling out a house window and taking a crotch shot from a tree branch on the way down, it’s hard to say that either one can add much to the comedy in this movie.
The big game is equally pleased with crotch shots, falling down, knocking into things, and dopey action sequences. Maybe the game would have been more interesting if these kids actually seemed like more than “The Little Stooges.” That feels like the main difference between this and say “The Mighty Ducks” or “Bad News Boys”. There’s no real reason to care, and every reason to believe everything is just gonna turn out fine cause the script requires it.
But who needs to feel the love of actual football, sportsmanship, and teamwork when you can add a bunch of cute, silly scenes for kids to clown around in. Kids are cute, they do the darndest things. This is football for people whose favorite sport is “America’s Funniest Home” videos.