Metacritic reviews

I’ve seen versions of the plot of “Necessary Roughness” in almost every other movie ever made about an underdog sports team - but I fell for it again this time, because it was well done, and because the movie doesn’t try to pump itself up into more than it is, a good-humored entertainment.

An amiable comedy about a patched-together football squad, tries to do just that, comes up short after half time, but hangs on well enough to beat the spread.

An infectious albeit formulaic game of Cinderella football, this happy athletic romp seems to know just how wheezy it is, but the team grunts "hut, hut," and puts it right on the numbers anyway. It's "Hoosiers" with a pigskin pumpkin and a lot more sis-boom-bah.

The film itself is a genial, slight, entirely predictable football comedy, but it serves Bakula well.

While NECESSARY ROUGHNESS admittedly traverses highly familiar territory, with few surprises, it does deserve to be appreciated as a genuinely entertaining, albeit old-fashioned, college football yarn that's great fun to watch.

Although adequately put together, this is entirely unnecessary as a movie, with nothing to add to its limited interest sub-genre, no surprises at all in its by-the-numbers script, and no credit at all to the various servicable members of the cast.

If the movie were a farcical free-for-all ridiculing the hyper-competitive world of college football, it might be amusing. But it can never decide whether to be an athletic answer to "National Lampoon's Animal House" or icky-inspirational like "Rocky."

Essentially, this is a football version of the equally contrived and only slightly less hokey baseball comedy Major League.

I wish that movies, like scholastic football, could be judged on a "no pass, no play" basis.

The whole movie, in fact, is one big blooper.