Movie Review: 80 For Brady

In the history of organized team sports in this country, it is impossible to find any athlete who has had more good fortune, great coach, great owner, and downright stunning coaching gifts of 2 super bowl wins (against Seattle and Atlanta) than New England and Tom Brady. For the Seattle and Atlanta wins, New England should have lost both of those games, they won only because of the horrendous coaching of the opposing teams. Brady also won 3 Super Bowls by 3 points each and could have lost any of those games. Brady's only outright dominant win in Super Bowl #55 was against Kansas City, where the Tampa Bay defense and offensive line injuries made the Kansas City offense impossible to run. Patrick Mahomes was running for his life in almost every play. In this history of the NFL, and 32 teams and many years, no other NFL team has 7 Super Bowl wins like Tom Brady has as a player.

The other day, after changing his mind last year, Tom Brady finally decided to retire from the NFL. One has to wonder about the timing and potential marketing involved for the new movie "80 For Brady", which not only stars Tom Brady, but at the end of this film, has him talking about his retirement, and considering returning to the NFL yet again. None of this is a coincidence.

80 For Brady is a true story about women in their 80's who are big fans of Tom Brady and one year (for the New England and Atlanta) super bowl, find a way to get extremely expensive Super Bowl tickets. The problem with this story is that there is not nearly enough story to create a movie about, and because of this, there is too much time to fill. The filling of all of this excess time through jokes, some pratfalls, and too many side stories, makes for a mostly boring movie. This film probably could have been much better but any screenwriter would be hard-pressed to come up with enough new ideas to fill two hours.

80 For Brady stars Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Sally Field, and Rita Moreno. Their performances and acting were more or less equal to the light concept of this film with the remarkable caveat of Jane Fonda looking more like she is 50 than 85 due to all of that makeup.

Unfortunately, the Rotten Tomatoes critics are right this time around, with a low 62% rating. This is not really a movie, but a travelogue for going to a Super Bowl.