National Football Ladies are Super Bowled in ’80 for Brady’

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Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – “80 for Brady” has an all star lineup, but when it comes to scoring any genuine laughs it has a serious case of fumble-itis. It’s fun to see these talented women together on the screen but there’s not much there. It’s four old friends going to the Super Bowl, and that’s about it.

Trish (Jane Fonda), Lou (Lily Tomlin), Maura (Rita Moreno) and Betty (Sally Field) are four Patriots fans who dream big of seeing their favorite player … Tom Brady as himself … appear in the 2017 Super Bowl. Lou is a cancer survivor who found an uplift in football. Trish is a sexpot still enjoying dating and writing Rob Gronkowski erotic fan fiction. Maura is a widow who’s a bit of a gambler. And Betty is a retired math professor who, when she’s not keeping track of her absent minded professor husband, is “the responsible one.”

80 for Brady
Photo credit: Paramount Pictures

So this time it’s four ladies on a road trip, and since there have been plenty of old guy road trip movies, there’s no reason that a bunch of stellar senior citizen movie stars can’t get a good script. But the script by Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins gives them absolutely nothing to do and has no ideas.

Harry Hamlin plays a retired Super Bowl champ who takes a shine to Fonda’s Trish. Billy Porter shows up out of nowhere as an excuse for the octogenarians to do a poorly choreographed dance number. Patton Oswalt shows up for less than a minute, but manages one of the film's two mild chuckles with his pronunciation of the word sorcery. There’s a desperate Hail Mary scene involving the four ladies at a big party where they unwittingly ingest some potent potables. And the movie treats the NFL experience as some kind of football fantasy land, with Food Network host Guy Fieri playing a far too prominent role.

Director Kyle Marvin lets the scenes just lay there in a desperate hope that the talent on the screen will whip something out of nothing with labored jokes about strap ons and “Eyes Wide Shut.” Sally Field manages best and is responsible for the film’s only other chuckle. There’s almost nothing funny about any of it, but it’s all fairly innocuous, and didn’t fill me with seething rage like some unfunny comedies I’ve sat through.

The film acts as a sort of infomercial for the NFL but doesn’t understand much about football. The scenes depicting the Patriots epic comeback are almost laughable. And a scene where our superfans break into the Patriots coordinator booth to give a pep talk to Tom Brady is clumsily executed.

Lily Tomlin and Tom Brady in ’80 for Brady’
Photo credit: Paramount Pictures

And then there’s the issue of Tom Brady, portraying Tom Brady. He alone is responsible for the film’s PG-13 rating with a profane sideline expletive. Tomlin’s character Lou is the driving force behind the Super Bowl trip, and seems to have special connection to Brady since he provided her inspiration during her bout with cancer.

The movie takes things one step further and has Brady seemingly communicating directly with her through tv screens, and promotional videos in the concourse where he stops mid pitch and gives her a stiffly performed pep talk. Brady has movie star good looks but as an actor he’s no Payton Manning …he’s not even Fran Tarkenton. If these are the kind of indignities awaiting Tom Brady in a life after football, maybe he should rethink retirement yet again and stay on the field.

By SPIKE WALTERS Contributor HollywoodChicago.com spike@hollywoodchicago.com