★★★★

With only hours until game time, the team’s head coach (J.K. Simmons) and various power brokers (Lil Rel Howery, Tim Blake Nelson, Andrew Bachelor, Jeffrey Donovan, and David Koechner) need to save or destroy the current collegiate sports athletes by racing against the clock. Sure, Coach Lazor is having a terrible day. After years of striving for an NCAA championship that he can taste, he finds himself in the position to succeed. His star quarterback LeMarcus James (Stephan James) has won the Heisman Trophy and will make a $35 million fortune playing in the NFL Draft.

Coach, on the other hand, has a beautiful wife, Bailey (Kristin Chenoweth), who dotes on him and enrages his former balding cronies and coworkers. He makes $5 million per year, owns several homes, and is adored by fans and sports media alike, all of whom are hoping he will achieve football.

But, why is Coach Lazor having such a terrible day, one might wonder? Well, LeMarcus James has chosen to strike against the NCAA and will not participate. And he’s convincing enough to get different players from both teams to follow suit 72 hours before the game started. Moreover, Lazor’s lack of sexual appeal contributes to his wife leaving him for Elliott (Timothy Olyphant), a professor at one of the notable institutions he’s been coaching.

What garners interest is James’ plans for taking on the huge corporation that controversially makes billions of dollars off its student-athletes. There’s a lot to discuss and debate about in this film, which makes it potentially intriguing.

Although this film, directed by Ric Roman Waugh, boasts a lengthy running length of 145 minutes, it does not provide much substance in its plot or concept for James’s plan. Instead, National Champions focuses on a competition to see which of the show’s multi-talented cast members can say the worst dialogue or reveal the most ludicrous nighttime soap opera twists.

This is like an ESPN episode of “Dynasty.” If you think the remark about Coach Lazor’s impotence is irrelevant and inappropriate, listen to what he has to say about it during his speech. Lil Rel Howery, who plays the assistant coach, has a chance of becoming the first Black head coach to lead a championship squad if Lazor is unable for some reason.

National Champions does this and promptly dismisses it without explaining how intriguing it might be. It’s all about dangling carrots of importance before reverting to juvenile back-and-forth episodes of threats, blackmail, and gamesmanship.

To keep track of the myriad petty chicanery, this movie is going through, you’ll need a blackboard full of Xs and Os. There’s also a handy onscreen countdown to game day intended to bring suspense.
Unfortunately, they leave poor Stephan James holding the burden as the straight man. His worries and demands should have received greater attention and sincerity. At the very least, he gets to recite Samuel L. Jackson’s “Pulp Fiction” Ezekiel 25:17 speech for no apparent reason, at the film’s beginning. At first, it seemed to be an odd use of nostalgia. Nonetheless, the graphics and motions will certainly give viewers something to enjoy.