Distant replay.

I gotta confess to never having seen the original version of The Longest Yard, but by all accounts it's not a bad little movie. Steenblogen & I rented the sequel tonight and it almost made me want to see the original.

Less a typical Adam Sandler vehicle than an ensemble piece, The Longest Yard is also both more and less funny than I'd anticipated: the gags are fewer and further between than I expected, but individually they're funnier. Prison life is actually shown with a little grit and it's not all chuckles and knee-slaps behind the walls of the penitentiary.

The movie's paced well, Chris Rock does what he does best and the real-life football players acquit themselves well, demonstrating that pro football does teach you something about acting. James Cromwell, whom I still think of as the kindly farmer from Babe, does the 'vicious warden' thing just fine (two points if you can namethe last movie he played a warden in) and the choice to get Burt Reynolds in to play Michael Conrad's role from the original movie was a nice touch.

All in all, better than we expected: good, brisk comedy with some well-shot football scenes thrown in.