It is the dream of anyone needing to make a quick buck to be able to gamble in the world of Hollywood movies. All you would need to do is find some hopeless small town sports team made up of big hearted, good humoured but unfit losers. Throw in a beloved training ground under threat from some evil international corporation and an eccentric, down-on-his-luck former sports coach looking for that one last piece of glory and you have yourself a winner! Once you had discovered this perfect Hollywood set-up, you could sit back, place your 10 dollar bet and watch them cruise their way to victory and the money roll into your back account. Sadly, in reality, if the odds are low then so is the chance of you getting back in the green. However, just in case you wake up tomorrow in the world of against the odds comebacks and heartwarming underdogs succeeding, here are three surefire gambles from the land of the silver screen.
1.Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Rawson Marshall’s 2004 hit comedy begins as unrealistic before confidentially spiralling into completely fantastical. Even if you’re willing to accept that Ben Stiller’s permed and lycra loving White Goodman could build a multimillion pound business, the idea that Rip Torn’s wheelchair-bound sociopath being the dodgeball equivalent of Scotty Bowman is pushing it. Although considering that the teams that Average Joes competes against consist of steroid loving girl scouts and unibrowed Russian bodybuilders, it suddenly does not seem quite so unbelievable that Justin Long could be a closeted athletic machine. The final match is naturally a OTT slapstick affair and manages to seamlessly saves Average Joe’s Gym from closure, via some questionable betting, and resolve the not so suspenseful will-they-won’t-they love story between Christine Taylor and Vince Vaughn.
2. Rocky
The film that taught the world that regardless of how inexperienced you are, a montage of surprisingly easy looking training exercising and a dramatic score is all you need to go from zero to hero. Of course, the effectiveness of the montage training method does become questionable when you realise that Rocky only appears to gain the ability to be punched in the face an inhuman amount of times, rather than – you know – actually being able to box.
3.Wimbledon
At the time of Wimbledon’s release in September 2004, a British tennis player had not won the championships in over 60 years. Therefore Richard Loncraine’s film’s story of ridiculously British Peter Colt, a past-it tennis player on the brink of retirement, winning Wimbledon was about as likely as Hugh Grant himself jumping from the stands and slashing his way to victory. The film is particularly unbelievable considering that Colt looks the type whose daily exercise would consisting of pouring afternoon tea and spends the majority of the film more preoccupied with seducing an American tennis pro played by Kirsten Dunst than actually training for the title. Naturally Colt comes within one point of losing every match he plays and somehow manages to fit in several romantic misunderstandings in-between. The films climax is predictably melodramatic with everything but Colt being maimed by a tiger at the change-over throw at him before he avails.
