News about Bobby Farrelly

BRIAN VINER: Campeones, Spain's first film, was a big critical and commercial success when it first came out five years ago. It was inspired by true-life events in Valencia, that it told the tale of a disgraced basketball coach who had been sentenced to community service by taking responsibility of a team of players with intellectual disabilities. An English-language translation seemed only a matter of time, and here it is: the Iowa Stallions' Woody Harrelson was assistant coach of a minor-league basketball team, with Des Moines, Iowa. On Wednesday, I saw Champions at a gala screening in aid of the charity Mencap, which attracted a large number of people with learning and other disabilities. The film received a lot of admiration from them, so I'm reluctant to knock it out. It's a modest audience pleaser directed by Bobby Farley in his first directorial outing away from his brother Peter (with whom he made the 1994 smash Dumb And Dumber). However, from where I was seated, it begins a sequence of emotional slam dunks that haven't been able to rank any of them.