Spiel ohne Regeln

A remake of a movie with the same title that was also in the meantime remade in Britain, but involving what I would call “real" football, in other words, soccer. This version with Sandler works quite well, while not being as good as the British Mean Machine, but thanks to the classic “MTV look" it is pleasant to look at and the picture’s pace is pretty solid, despite being on the long side. However, the movie lacks somebody with charisma, primarily Monk as played by Jason Statham. Without him, this really doesn’t work. (08.01.2007)

A super comedy with impressive action scenes. Sandler rocks again. The whole gang of criminal footballers is simply excellent. And, surprisingly, that applies to Chris Rock too, who isn’t at all annoying, but in any case here he is treated as he usually deserves to be in other movies. (25.07.2009)

A sports gem from a time when Sandler's comedies were still a guarantee of quality, at least for his fans. The film moves at a tremendous pace from the swirl of the big city and stripped-down parties to the seedy prison wasteland and begins to focus on the most important thing: football – not the wonderful European sport where talent wins over strength, but let's not kid ourselves, to see a crowd of "five-star" black men or former wrestlers, cutting each other's heads off and making outrageous fun of themselves is simply great fun, notwithstanding the stupidity (disgusting cheerleaders, Rob Schneider) and one-sidedness (one player is overweight, so we laugh at him repeatedly) of some of the jokes. Anyway, the rest of the film, including the necessary dramatic overlay and with the generous contribution of Cromwell and Fichtner, works almost perfectly, and in the end we keep our fingers crossed for those rude, violent and mentally retarded individuals from the prisoners so convulsively that we wonder what they did to deserve it... Probably because The Longest Yard is simply a good film. 80% (18.04.2011)

It's too long, it's not very funny, but actually, that's what's interesting about it. There are moments here that I enjoyed precisely because they were quite serious, different from what is usual in Sandler's films. And yet, he dared to include classic interesting characters, although there aren't as many here that stand out so much. It's a shame, I expected a bit more from this sports movie. (27.06.2014)