That’s A Sport
Will Ferrell loves him some athletics.
Fostering a filmography that looks more like a gym class lesson plan, Ferrell has already endeared himself to the ESPN crowd with films such as the NACAR-themed Talladega Nights (brief aside: can any activity where the main challenge is turning left actually be considered a sport?) and Blades of Glory.
Last year (when this column was originally published) Semi-Pro was releaseded in theaters, further cementing Will Ferrell’s monopoly on sports-themed comedies — a monopoly that can only be challenged by Air Bud. Ferrell’s films are just the tip of the iceberg that is recent sports comedies. While sports movies have always had a strong presence in Hollywood, the genre’s recent excess has driven writers to mine some pretty strange arenas in search for original ideas.
In the past few years, we’ve seen movies based on ping-pong, dodgeball, Mexican wrestling and competitive beer drinking. While it may seem as if there are no more sports left to laugh at, there is no need to fret. As long as there is dead-air to fill on ESPN, there will always be new sports to be invented. Here are a few sports just waiting to be made into a Will Ferrell movie.
Freeze Tag
Almost everybody remembers playing freeze tag on the playground. Those that don’t remember playing the game, remember crying when they were told by the popular kids that they couldn’t play because they smelled funny. Freeze tag, for those either smelly or out of the loop, is a variation of tag, a game that involves a person or persons who are “it” and must “tag” other players. In freeze tag, players who have been tagged must remain frozen until they are freed by another member of their team. While there has not been a movie that deals specifically with the competitive world of freeze tag, the game of tag can be seen as a basis for countless horror movies where instead of somebody being “it,” they are a masked killer with a machete and instead of “tagging” players, they brutally slaughter people in some ironic way.
Combat Robots
As our country gets more and more obese, we will begin to rely more on building things to do our sports for us. Robot combat, a gladiator-style death match between two or more man-operated machines, has been made famous by such late-night shows such as Battlebots and Robot Wars. In a typical match, glorified RC cars are pitted against each other in a game of “who can destroy each other’s hard work first.” These are no ordinary robots, though. They have been outfitted with blades, buzz saws, pinchers and battering rams. While some may find it entertaining to watch machines poke each other with sharp implements, this is worst possible thing for humanity to be participating in. Strapping weapons on a vacuum cleaner brings us that much closer to SkyNet’s rise to power. When battlebot designers find themselves being turned into a battery by their toaster oven, I just hope they enjoyed their little hobby.
Live-Action Role-Playing
If there is any group training to be future defenders against a machine uprising, its live-action role-players, or LARPers for short. A LARPer is a rare-breed of warrior who wages war in the battlefield of their imagination. Constructing weaponry and armor from ingredients that can be bought at Hobby Lobby, these weekend warriors adopt the make-believe persona of fantasy figures — using what Mr. Roger taught them to turn city parks into a battle for Middle-Earth. Using a fairly complex point system that I have neither the space to explain nor the inclination to pretend to understand, LARPers strike each other with fake swords, maces and other hand-crafted weapons in a cross between fencing and Cowboys and Indians. For an engrossing movie on the subject, check out Darkon, a documentary that explores two rival LARPers.
