Genre: Comedy
Premise: Four women in their 80s who have built a weekly routine of watching Patriots games decide to travel to the Super Bowl together so they can see Tom Brady win, what they believe, will be his final Super Bowl.
About: When Tom Brady retired, he immediately set up the first movie for his brand new production company. This is that movie. It’s written by Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins, who are best known for writing the female Superbad, “Booksmart.” However, as often happens in Hollywood, Halpern and Haskins were rewritten by the director, Kyle Marvin, and Marvin’s producing partner, Michael Covino. Up until this point, Marvin and Covino have written a small TV show called “All Wrong,” and an indie movie about a couple of biking friends called “The Climb.” I’m guessing the friendship portrayed in “The Climb” is why Brady okay’d them to make his first film.
Writers: Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins (rewritten by Kyle Marvin and Michael Covino)
Details: 116 pages
Eagles vs. Niners. Bengals vs. Chiefs.
But no Brady. :(
Wait, what am I talking about? YES BRADY!
80 FOR BRADY!
At first glance, you might say, “Carson, this doesn’t seem like the kind of script you’d typically review. Have you gone loopy? Maybe being so wrong about The Last of Us has infected your brain.”
I’ll tell you exactly why I’m reviewing this. Everywhere I drive these days, I see a big fat billboard for 80 For Brady. And I’m looking up at that billboard and I’m thinking… they’re going to release that movie… IN THEATERS???
Meanwhile, at the end of this week, Jonah Hill is coming out with a new comedy called “You People.” Which I think looks great. However, Jonah Hill’s movie… IS ON STREAMING. Let that sink in for a second. The hip young comedy actor’s movie is on streaming while the movie with four 80 year old women gets a theatrical release.
What’s going on here?
The answer may lie in Tom Hanks’ most recent film, A Man Called Otto. The film is considered a huge success considering that nobody thought it would make 5 million dollars, much less 35 million.
What I think is happening is that the studios are starting to realize that they can still market theatrical movies to people who grew up going to the theater. Whereas, with the younger generation – they’re growing up expecting everything to be on TV. So you can’t really get them to leave the house unless you’ve got a 400 million dollar superhero film.
I think this newfound strategy is kinda interesting and I’m curious to see if it’s going to work.
80 year olds Lily, Carol, Jane, and Julie spend every single Sunday during the NFL season watching the Patriots – and more specifically, Tom Freaking Brady – play. It’s their little ritual. It’s their little group. And for one of them it’s *literally* what they live for.
Their group started back in 2001 when the girls were at Lily’s after she’d been diagnosed with cancer. They all wanted to watch TV but the remote ran out of batteries. So they were stuck – GASP – watching FOOTBALL! As it so happens, that’s the first game that Tom Brady played. And they instantly fell in love with him. Brady then become Lily’s inspiration to fight!
Flash forward to the present and Lily is keeping a big secret from her friends. The cancer is back. And since this may be Brady’s last Super Bowl, she dips into her savings and buys four Super Bowl tickets. Off the four of them go to Houston, where the Pats are playing the Falcons (this is 2017).
Once there, it turns into The Hangover. They participate in NFL activities. They go to exclusive parties. They dance it up with Guy Ferieri! But of course their individual issues pull them apart during the trip. Jane just wants to get laid. Carol needs to break free of her needy husband. Lily keeps dodging her doctor’s calls. And Julie – actually, I can’t remember what was going on with her. Something relevant, I’m sure.
When their excessive partying leads to them losing the tickets, it looks like their Super Bowl dream is about to go the way of a Chicago Bears postseason. They’ll have to find another way into the game. Which, of course, they do. And when the Patriots go down by 25 points, it will be up to one of our four ladies to give Tom Brady the pep talk of his life.
There’s a screenwriting approach that a lot of writers – even professional writers (as we’re about to see) – resort to. It’s called the “Just Bear With Me” approach and it works like this: you know your heroes are going to go on this big adventure for the bulk of the movie. And that adventure is going to be fun.
So, for the first act, you say to your audience, “Just bear with me. I’m going to set up all the characters. I’m going to go through some annoying exposition and backstory. But if you bear with me, I promise you things will get better.”
That’s the approach 80 For Brady goes with. And it’s nearly a script-killer. I mean, I’m sorry, but the first fifteen(!!!) pages of this script are the characters in a room watching a Patriots game. After the game, one of them says, “Remember how this all started,” and we jump back 20 years to the same living room where we see them watch *another* Patriots game.
It’s lazy screenwriting like this that really confuses aspiring screenwriters because they’ve been told that their first act has to move like lightning. This first act moves like a sloth whose feet are coated with molasses.
I bring this up to remind aspiring screenwriters that today’s writers are only allowed to do this because they’ve already gotten paid. They are developing the script for a studio. So they don’t have to worry about winning over readers. You, on the other hand, have to come up with a WAAAAAY more interesting opening than this script. I can promise you that.
And I’m not excusing these writers. Because even if you are getting paid, you still owe it to yourselves to try. You should still attempt to entertain the reader in that opening act, and not just inundate them with information.
And I got news for you. Quippy dialogue isn’t enough. It helps. But little funny quips like, “Make sure you packed your prune juice” (my line, not theirs) aren’t enough to entertain the reader through fifteen pages of exposition. Funny dialogue should SUPPLEMENT the scene. Not be the only thing it has going for it.
Did anything in the script work?
Well, as I’ve said many times before, I like when scripts take advantage of their concept. Especially comedies. Give us comedic scenarios that can only occur in your screenplay. 80 for Brady has a few of those.
One of them was when the girls first went on their trip. They had to pick up Carol, the one “80” living at an old person’s home. And they get there only to find out she’s sleeping. The problem is, this home takes sleeping VERY SERIOUSLY. They NEVER wake their members up. So the girls have to sneak into this place, wake up Carol, and kidnap her.
It’s a lighthearted scene. It’s not anything special. But it was unique to the premise, which I liked.
Another one was the ending when the Patriots went down 25-0 and Lily sneaks up into the Offensive Coordinator’s booth, takes the coordinator’s microphone so she can give Brady a pep talk (which nicely connects with her own battle). I think most writers would’ve clumsily written some scene where the girls corner Tom Brady and try to hang out with him or something (it looks like they may have done exactly this in the rewrites). This was a more elegant connection between them and Brady. Dare I say it was perfect!
But these moments aren’t enough to overcome a standardly executed script with an extremely lazy first act. So, unfortunately, it wasn’t for me.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Scripts work better with specificity. It’s always better than generality. So when the women first eat at a restaurant in Houston, the slugline says, “INT. FANCY RESTAURANT.” Come on, guys. It took me 3 seconds to google ‘best restaurants in Houston.’ “Brennan’s” came up. So there you go. “INT. BRENNAN’S RESTAURANT – NIGHT.” If you’re worried the reader won’t know it’s fancy, tell them it’s fancy in the first line of description underneath the slug!
What I learned 2: Pay attention to how this film does. Cause if it does well, you may see a new trend emerge – theatrical releases for former star actors and actresses 60 and up. Which means you can start writing specs for those actors.
