Rebound

Maverick sports coach turns team of school-aged losers into champions... Quite how three people can claim credit for coming up with this story concept is hard to fathom.

Yet it took two more to turn it into a script which entirely fails to stand out from the crowd of geeks-done-good family comedies that stretches from The Bad News Bears to The Mighty Ducks.

Laughter's kryptonite Martin Lawrence sets himself up as Roy McCormick, a flashy, quick-tempered basketball mastermind whose latest outburst sees him stripped of his college coaching position.

To get his job back, he must complete a season without losing his rag again. On the advice of his agent (Meyer), Roy takes a post at his old junior high school, whose hopeless ‘Smelters’ team can barely score a point, let alone win a game.

Initially doing it for the positive press, Roy somehow manages to set his dorky bunch of misfits (this being the only school in America with no jocks) on the trail to glory. And like the film, he never strays from the rulebook.

Having established himself as a director to overlook with Dr Doolittle 2 and Daddy Day Care, Carr stages the on-court action with all the passion of someone who used to get beaten up by his school basketball team.

Without a single original character or decent gag, we're treated to a succession of lame pratfalls, Lawrence's gurning and a will-they-won't-they-do-you-really-need-to-ask romance involving the school's yummy mummy/music teacher (Robinson).

Elements are thrown in at random in a futile bid to generate laughs – with none more bizarre than Lawrence's second role as a pimp-like preacher. One gets the impression that everyone involved wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.

The audience will be feeling the same when the clock finally runs down after 84 long minutes.

Elliott Noble