The Underdoggs Movie Review

Streaming on Prime Video – January 26, 2024

“The Underdoggs” is a typical rehash of the down-on-their-luck sports team given a second chance by a famous sport legend who is in a legal jam. In this case, the emphasis is on ‘hash’, and ‘ganja’ and ‘weed’ and other smoke-able entities. This Hard R-rated comedy is right up the wheelhouse of the star – Snoop Dogg.

Jaycen Jennings (played by Snoop Dogg) is a Long Beach native who had a fantastic career in football, starting in high school and then into the Pro Leagues. He was a premier wide receiver who made a name for himself. But his head got too full of himself and he irked all other players. He was let go and for the past many years he has lived in his past glory days.

He gets blown off by his agent Ryan (played by Kal Penn) who tells Jaycen he is among one of the most-hated past players around. Jaycen leaves in a huff, and his fancy sports car gets in an accident with a city bus. The judge is going to throw the book at Jaycen, unless he does community service work.

Jaycen is working on ‘Dog Doo Duty’ at a local Long Beach park. He sees a downtrodden Pop Warner football team at practice. They are small and untalented and the doormat of every other team in their League. He also sees that one of the people on the sidelines is Cherise Evans (played by Tika Sumpter). She was his old flame during high school.

Cherise is the mom of one of the players, Tre (played by Jonigan Booth). Jaycen figures that his ‘community service’ duty is now changed to coaching this bottom of the barrel team. He happens to visit his old school. There he runs into another old friend, Kareem (played by Mike Epps).

Kareem sticks with Jaycen from that point, and he also wants to help the terrible team. Jaycen sees his old high school football coach. Coach Feis (played by George Lopez) tells Jaycen that regardless of how well the team can play, he needs to find something that will motivate and teach them. Coach also happens to come up with the new team name – ‘The Underdoggs’.

The first team they play is coached by a real doofus named Chip Collins (played by Andrew Schulz) Chip and Jaycen have bad blood going back quite a while. Chip and his team plow over the Underdoggs, and Jaycen gets real angry and vows revenge on Chip and his over-sized goons.

Cherise is always there, and Jaycen attempts to rekindle the old flame. She tells him that his old flame has burned out when he left her behind for the big leagues. But being the coach of a big group of misfits reminds Jaycen that he started the same way. He might be able to spark up these little ragamuffins in some way.

Jaycen actually spends time with each player and finds out a little more about what drives each one. He turns the collection of bratty, foul-mouthed members of the squad into something that resembles a winning football team. He has is assistant coach Kareem helping out. Cherise is always there to cheer them on. As they win more games, all the family members come out to cheer.

The team has turned around, and the final game will be against the team coached by Chip Collins. This is going to a super grudge-match level take down. But then Jaycen hears from his agent Ryan. He has been able to get Jaycen noticed, now that the Underdoggs have gone from pathetic to playing in the Champion Pop Warner finals.

Jaycen is offered a sports show on a big network, and he must be at the studio. Too bad is it the same day as the Big Game. Jaycen is in a quandry as what he should do. His dream was to have his own major network show someday. But the team would be let down if they did not have the Coach there with them to fight the rival team.

“The Underdoggs” runs out of the same playbook that you might have seen in some other similar movies. Think about “The Bad News Bears”, or “The Mighty Ducks”, or even “Champions” (from just a couple years ago). But this one is different mostly because of the ‘Snoop Dogg’ factor. The Hard R-Rated aspect means that there are more ‘F-Bombs’ flying through the air than footballs.

There are huge amounts of profanity and cussing, by everyone in sight. There are copious amounts of drugs and sexual references throughout the whole movie. Even the opening blurb has a ‘warning’ about how the movie is ‘not for young children’. But then turns that into a profanity laced joke about how those kiddos are probably used to nasty trash talk. It’s a wonder they did not call this movie “The Mighty F^cks”…

Snoop Dogg plays drugged-out ex-superstar named Jaycen. But maybe he is really just playing himself? It seems he would like to become a new ‘former rapper turned actor’. That would put him into the ranks of Ice Cube, Common, Ludacris, and others like that. Maybe in his next movie, he and Martha Stewart could play an unlikely pair of police detectives out to solve crimes in the big city?

There are a few laughs once in a while. The movie looks fairly well produced, and the acting is fair. But on the whole, it bogged down by the over-the-top swearing and bad language. The story is so overdone that starts to look like a copy of a copy of a copy by the third act. There could be some promise of better story, but it never shows up.

“The Underdoggs” is an unneeded copy of very similar story lines that have been done better in other movies. Question is: “Who Let These Doggs Out”?