Stories about a fish-out-of-water adult coaching a rag tag sports team have been a staple of teenage comedies for decades. Now it’s Snoop Dogg’s kick at the can and, as one would hope with the rapper, THE UNDERDOGGS is true to his pot-smoking, expletive-dropping image.

Jaycen “Two Js” Jennings (Snoop Dogg) is a foul-mouthed, ex-professional football star who has seen better days. He now hosts a podcast that few people listen to, hoping that one day the folks at Fox Sports will hire him on as a colour commentator for their NFL broadcasts. After smashing up his car in spectacular fashion, he is sentenced to community service, picking up trash at a public park in his hometown of Long Beach, California. There he finds an unruly bunch of tweens and teens practicing football. Seeing an opportunity to rehabilitate his public image, he decides to coach the team but it’s not easy. Both he and the team’s quarterback, who happens to be the son of an ex-girlfriend, are too arrogant for their own good.

Don’t let the scores this film is getting on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb turn you off from checking it out. Sure, THE UNDERDOGGS isn’t highbrow cinema and Snoop Dogg isn’t celebrated for his acting chops but it is a lot of fun. This is definitely not a Disney film though, so think twice before you let your little ones watch it. It is loaded with f-bombs, n-words and plenty of spliff smoking. The story is an unapologetic riff on the 1992 film, THE MIGHTY DUCKS, and there are numerous references both to that film and its star, Emilio Estevez. Director Charles Stone III (UNCLE DREW) gives Snoop plenty of opportunities to rattle off some good one-liners, including a bull’s eye aimed squarely at his real-life good friend Martha Stewart. Comedians Mike Epps (DOLEMITE IS MY NAME; THE HANGOVER films), who plays his homie Kareem, and George Lopez (BLUE BEETLE), who plays his high school football coach Feis, get to share some of the heavy lifting too. Feis has a good one about Two Js’ dreadlocks. The cast of mostly unknown pre-teens and teens is uniformly good and they hold their own against the more experienced actors.

For those unfamiliar with Snoop Dogg’s community work, particularly in and around his hometown of Long Beach (and I was one of those people), the film closes with a post script that will surprise you in a very good way.

THE UNDERDOGGS is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video. If you’re looking for a lightweight film that has some lol moments, you can do far worse than this one.

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