I’m writing this “Home Team” review so you don’t have to go through the same painful hour-and-a-half viewing experience that I endured.
Back in May 2021, it was announced that Kevin James would be starring as Sean Payton, the now-retired head coach of the New Orleans Saints, in a Netflix movie. I remember seeing the headline and being quite confused.
I asked myself, was it about the year the Saints won Super Bowl XLIV? Who’s directing and producing it? Then, I clicked on the article.
Hold on, is this is a Happy Madison movie? Is it a family comedy? Is Taylor Lautner in this? Is this is a real movie or a fever dream? Wait, say that again, please. Is Kevin James Sean Payton? 
Flash forward to this week, where I watched “Home Team” in its entirety. The film follows James as Payton, who, after being suspended from the NFL due to his Bountygate involvement, returns home and starts coaching his 12-year-old son’s Pop Warner football team. I clicked play and, thus, a cinematic atrocity ensued.
This movie was utterly insufferable from start to finish. It starts with some truly cursed imagery of actual footage of Super Bowl XLIV with James edited into it as Coach Payton, which is not even the film’s worst offense. The crux of the movie’s crimes stems from it feeling entirely unnecessary and completely unfunny. By the two-minute mark (or rather the two-minute warning sign that this film would be egregiously horrible), there’s already product placement of Juicy Fruit—a chewing gum that Payton is widely known for loving—and a plethora of cringeworthy jokes.
You might’ve guessed it, but the film does not get any better, as it unsuccessfully inches up the field to no gain or glory.
I realize this movie is a family comedy at its core, but a film about Sean Payton coaching peewee football has no right to be this bad. At the very least, it could’ve been a mediocre sports drama about the consequences of your actions, the dangerous ambition of winning and the power of family. The New Orleans Saints have been through a lot with Payton as their head coach, so Netflix and even James could have crafted something somewhat special.
However, “Home Team” is not special. The movie resorts to toilet humor that comes from people falling or vomiting while the emotion stems from lousy clock management, horrible play calling, trite family drama, and the 2012 hit “We Are Young” by fun. feat. Janelle Monáe.
It’s not funny in the slightest, it feels entirely forced with so many unnecessary scenes and characters, and I cannot reiterate this enough—Kevin James plays Coach Sean Payton. It sounds genuinely insane for me to say this, but the best part of this movie was Taylor Lautner as the head coach of Payton’s son’s team. Wild, I know.
Payton’s decision to leave has been a horrible time for Saints fans everywhere and now there is this atrocity. I know there are more significant events happening globally, but this feels like the world is imploding on itself. Thankfully, Sean Payton’s cameo at the end was bittersweet and felt like a wink at the audience. It might be the one saving grace of the movie.
No shade to those that worked on the movie, but it could have been so much better than the flaming dumpster fire that Netflix decided to greenlight. Talk about a fumble of a film.