| Home Team | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Allan A. Goldstein |
| Written by |
|
| Screenplay by | Jeff Lewis Pierce O'Donnell |
| Produced by |
|
| Starring | Steve Guttenberg Sophie Lorain Ryan Slater |
| Edited by | Richard Comeau |
Release date |
|
Running time | 91 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $4 million [1] |
Home Team is a 1998 comedy film starring Steve Guttenberg.
Mr. Butler is a former pro soccer player whose reputation for partying and gambling has caught up with him. He is sentenced to a year of probation, which includes working as a handyman in a dilapidated boys' home. Karen runs the home for a group of eleven boys whose parents could not raise them for some reason. Karen wants the boys to do something meaningful so she persuades them to start a soccer team known simply as "Home Team". They are terrible, but Mr. Butler, who has concealed his skills so far, is persuaded to coach the team, which eventually improves. A fire damages the home to the point that it must be torn down, and the boys will be separated, but efforts are made to keep the boys together. In a rematch, Home Team ends up defeating the first team they played on the way to a possible championship. The boys' cook Cookie, who likes to bet on horse races, made a bet with a Las Vegas bookie that Home Team would win; his winnings will be enough to get them a new house.
Home Team was filmed in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. [2] 15-year old Ryan Slater in the film is also the half-brother of actress Christian Slater. [1]
Screenwriter (and attorney) Pierce O'Donnell, who wrote the script in 1994, filed suit against the Canadian producer group in 2000, regarding allegedly unfair accounting practices in the film's development costs. [3]
The French title of the movie is "Une combinaison gagnante" (A winning combination) and the German name is Home Team – Ein treffsicheres Team (An unerring team).
The Wallflower critical guide to contemporary North American directors (2000) notes that Home Team was "little known" at that time. [4] VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (2004) writes that the movie has a "familiar plot but that's not necessarily bad." [5] The Radio Times Guide To Film (2007) opined that "Hollywood still hasn't got the hang of football (or soccer, as they insist on calling it) and this family-oriented frolic is decidedly minor league." [6]
Efilmcritic.com's 2001 review of the film was especially biting, calling it "an affront to film making". [7]
Curtis Lee Hanson was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Born in Reno, Nevada, Hanson grew up in Los Angeles. After dropping out of high school, Hanson worked as photographer and editor for Cinema magazine. In the 1970s, Hanson got involved in filmmaking starting with participating to the writing Daniel Haller's The Dunwich Horror (1970) and his directorial debut Sweet Kill (1973), where he lacked creative control to fulfill his vision. While Hanson continued directing, he rose to prominence by being involved in the writing of critically acclaimed films. This includes Daryl Duke's The Silent Partner (1978), Samuel Fuller's White Dog and Carroll Ballard's Never Cry Wolf (1983).
Stephen Furst was an American actor. After gaining attention with his featured role as Kent "Flounder" Dorfman in the comedy film National Lampoon's Animal House and its spin-off television series Delta House, he went on to be a regular as Dr. Elliot Axelrod in the medical drama series St. Elsewhere from 1983 to 1988, and as Centauri diplomatic attaché Vir Cotto in the science fiction series Babylon 5 from 1994 to 1998. Other notable film roles included the college comedy Midnight Madness (1980), as a team leader in an all-night mystery game, the action thriller Silent Rage (1982), as deputy to a sheriff played by Chuck Norris, and the comedy The Dream Team (1989), as a good-natured psychiatric patient.
Police Academy is a series of American comedy films, the first six of which were made in the 1980s and the seventh in 1994. The series opened with Police Academy (1984), which started with the premise that a new mayor had announced a policy requiring the police department to accept all willing recruits. The film followed a group of misfit recruits in their attempts to prove themselves capable of being police officers, and succeeding both in spite of and because of their eccentricities. The main character in the first four films, Carey Mahoney, was a repeat offender, who was forced to join the police academy as punishment. The seventh and to date last installment, Mission to Moscow, was released in 1994. Guttenberg in September 2018 announced that a new Police Academy film was in the works.
Steven Robert Guttenberg is an American actor, author, businessman, producer, and director. His lead roles in Hollywood films of the 1980s and 1990s include Cocoon, Police Academy, Three Men and a Baby, Diner, The Bedroom Window, Three Men and a Little Lady, The Big Green, and Short Circuit.
The Fox and the Hound is a 1981 American animated buddy drama film produced by Walt Disney Productions and loosely based on the 1967 novel of the same name by Daniel P. Mannix. It tells the story of the unlikely friendship between a red fox named Tod and a hound dog named Copper. They struggle to preserve their friendship despite their emerging instincts and the surrounding social pressures demanding them to be adversaries, as they are enemies by nature. After Chief, Copper's mentor and guardian who is owned by the same hunter as him, is hit by a train while chasing Tod and seemingly almost dies, Copper assumes his role as a hunting dog and vows vengeance against Tod. Eventually, they fight each other, but in the end, Copper saves Tod after Tod saves him and his owner from a bear.
Stephen Chbosky is an American filmmaker and author. He is best-known for writing the bestselling coming-of-age novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999), as well as for writing and directing the 2012 film adaptation of the book. Most recently, he directed the 2017 drama Wonder and the 2021 film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen. His first psychological horror novel, Imaginary Friend, was published in October 2019.
Hard Rain is a 1998 disaster heist action thriller film directed by former cinematographer-turned director Mikael Salomon, written by Graham Yost, produced by Ian Bryce, Mark Gordon, and Gary Levinsohn, and starring Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater, Randy Quaid, Minnie Driver, and Ed Asner. An international co-production among the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, and Japan, the plot centers around a heist and man-made treachery amidst a natural disaster in a small Indiana town.
The Amazing Mr. X, also known as The Spiritualist, is a 1948 American horror thriller film noir directed by Bernard Vorhaus with cinematography by John Alton. The film tells the story of a phony spiritualist racket. The film is prominently featured in Alton's book on cinematography Painting with Light (1949).
The Big Green is a 1995 American family sports comedy film by Walt Disney Pictures starring Olivia d'Abo and Steve Guttenberg, written and directed by Holly Goldberg Sloan. It also stars Bug Hall, Chauncey Leopardi, and Patrick Renna. The film is about the antics of a soccer team consisting of a misfit group of small town Texas kids who are coached by a teacher from England.
Air Bud: World Pup, also known as Air Bud 3, is a 2000 sports comedy film directed by Bill Bannerman. The third film in the Air Bud series, it was the 2nd to be filmed without Buddy, the canine star of the first film; Buddy died after production of the first film. Air Bud: World Pup was the first film in the Air Bud series not to be released theatrically in the U.S., opting to only be released on video, but was played in Philippine theaters for a limited time.
Alice is a 1982 musical-fantasy film directed by Jacek Bromski. A Belgian and Polish co-production, it is a modern telling of Lewis Carroll's 1865 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland story and stars French actress Sophie Barjac in the title role. Jean-Pierre Cassel plays the jogger named Rabbit with whom Alice falls in love; Susannah York, Paul Nicholas, Jack Wild, Tracy Hyde, Peter Straker and Dominic Guard all have supporting roles.
Demonic Toys is a 1992 American direct-to-video horror comedy film produced by Charles Band's Full Moon Entertainment and directed by Peter Manoogian. The film centers on a police officer who is terrorized by the title characters after a botched arrest. Like many other Full Moon releases, Demonic Toys never had a theatrical release and went straight-to-video in 1992. In the United States, the film was given an "R" rating for violence, language, and brief nudity. The franchise was created by Charles Band.
The Alchemist is a 1983 American horror film about a man who desires to avenge a curse placed on him by an evil magician. The film was directed by Charles Band, and stars Robert Ginty, Lucinda Dooling, and John Sanderford.
Chris Jones is a British filmmaker, author, film director, screenwriter and educator, who has written books on becoming a film-maker. Jones was educated at Bournemouth Film School, and made his feature film director debut at the age of 21 with The Runner (1992). He owns the film company called Living Spirit.
Charades is a 1998 mystery drama film directed by Stephen Eckelberry. The film stars Erika Eleniak, C. Thomas Howell, and Karen Black, who was a writer and producer on the film.
The UMBC Retrievers men's soccer team represents the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) college soccer competition. UMBC competes as a member of the America East Conference.
Red Scorpion 2 is a 1994 American action film starring Matt McColm, John Savage and Jennifer Rubin. It was directed by Michael Kennedy. The film is a sequel to the 1988 film Red Scorpion which starred Dolph Lundgren, although the story is largely unrelated to the first installment.
Mark Swift and Damian Shannon are American screenwriters and film producers. They are known for their collaborative script-writing projects, in particular Freddy vs. Jason and later the 2009 reboot Friday the 13th.
MusicHound was a compiler of genre-specific music guides published in the United States by Visible Ink Press between 1996 and 2002. After publishing eleven album guides, the MusicHound series was sold to London-based Music Sales Group, whose company Omnibus Press had originally distributed the books outside America. The series' founding editor was Gary Graff, formerly a music critic with the Detroit Free Press.
Wallflower is a 1948 American comedy film directed by Frederick de Cordova, written by Henry Ephron and Phoebe Ephron adapted from the play of the same name by Reginald Denham and Mary Orr, and starring Robert Hutton, Joyce Reynolds, Janis Paige, Edward Arnold, Barbara Brown and Jerome Cowan. It was released by Warner Bros. on June 13, 1948.