Slap Shot 2 (2002) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

I think this straight-to-vid film set a record than can never be topped. It used 100% of the sports movie clichés.

This continues the story of the inept Charleston Chiefs, and even though it is 25 years later, the Hansen Brothers are still playing. These three guys had to put blades on their walkers.

The Chiefs have only won 10 games in two years, so their owner jumps at the chance to sell them to a big media conglomerate which wants to use them for exhibition hockey.

 Here come the clichés.

1. The Chiefs are going to play as the hockey version of the Washington Generals, that patsy team that plays against the Globetrotters. They are assigned to look dumb and trip over one another while the Hockey Globetrotters make outrageous passes and trick plays.

2. The player-coach of the Chiefs (Stephen Baldwin) has been replaced by - a woman!

3. When the guys challenge her hockey knowledge, she schools them on and off the ice.

4. The demoted player-coach is an ex big leaguer who was banned from the NHL for gambling, ala Pete Rose. Nonetheless, he "coulda been one of the greats"

5. The Disney-like owners want the games to be played without violence.

6. The guys on the Globetrotter team are all Ivy League snobs with sweaters tied around their necks, all blond with perfect white teeth, a vision of the Hitler youth. They all studied at the Major Winchester school of pompous diction.

7. The clean-cut all-America guys actually take cheap shots on the ice.

8. But the Chiefs are forbidden to fight back.

9. The company keeps giving the Chiefs more and more money to act stupid, play the buffoon, and take the cheap shots. They keep humiliating themselves at ever-escalating levels.

10. The female coach and the former player-coach, despite a rough start, are falling in love.

11. The coach of the Globetrotter team is actually a dance choreographer, and he's a caricature version of a gay man, who the manly Chiefs refer to as a pansy and worse. This kind of stuff was sort of daringly offensive when Mel Brooks did it in The Producers, but now is just plain offensive. I suppose gay guys were not in the target audience for this bull-kangaroo testosterone film.
 

I could go on and on, but why bother? Imagine any sports movie plot device. It's in here. Needless to say, they have the big game when they get to play for real instead of by the script, and needless to say they win on a shot with no time left on the clock. And needless to say the team is sold to a surprise new ownership group, a group that virtually guarantees there will be a Slap Shot 3.

They must have hoped for a theatrical release for this film, because it was filmed in a 1.85:1 widescreen ratio, but that hope proved optimistic. It does look very rich for a video title.