Draft Day (2014)

"How is it that in the most macho sport ever invented the prize at the end is a piece of jewelry?" -Ali

Here is the way I hope the meetings and pitch for Draft Day went down: A man walks into the room and says "you know what we need...we need a movie about the true drama that is the NFL draft."  "It's got everything.  The sitting. The picking.  The waiting.  The analyzing. The self congratulations. The insults. The football. The dreams. It will appeal to fantasy football junkies and those guys that actually watch the NFL draft religiously. Arm chair Monday morning quarterbacking meets the movies. Boom."

But the pitchman probably said, "Let's find a way to put Mel Kiper in a movie."

Draft Day is the single worst film I have seen this year.  It begs to be turned off.  And the thing that I hate about it most is that it violates my rule that drama and action should involve real people in the same room talking to each other. 75% of Draft Day takes place with people talking on the phone. Ughhhhh!!!!!!!!!! It reminded me why guys in their basement who have their friends over to yell at a live draft parties shouldn't get to just write a movie brah.

I think the only way that this movie might have been saved from its inglorious fate as an unwanted dvd in the 1 dollar bin at an estate sale is if Aaron Sorkin had written it.  At least then it would have been shorter and snappier.

Finally, I gotta hand it to the writers for not resolving any of the true conflict they established throughout the movie. The only major plot point I understood to be meaningful was the question of "Why didn't Bo Callahan's teammates attend his 21st b-day bash?" I would have gotten a lot more resolution and satisfaction out of even a brief glimpse into the future where either A. Our protagonist was right and won several superbowls, or B. Our protagonist is out of a job on the street because all of his predictions turned out false or C. a future where none of this mattered at all.

On a scale of two 1st round picks to my next two future ores, I give Draft Day 1.7 out of  5 stars.