Too big a risk for little reward

Failing Coaching 101: Gary Kubiak puts Houston Texans' season at risk with AndreJohnson plan

Why is Andre Johnson playing in the second quarter of a preseason game?
Is Houston Texans coach Gary Kubiak already losing his mind in the preseason?
Matt Schaub has his timing down with Andre Johnson, thank you very much.

If one thing is apparent from the New Orleans Saints' wipeout of the Houston Texans Saturday night, it's that Matt Schaub and Andre Johnson are still going to need to be the Phoenix Suns of the NFL, a team that wears out foes with its offense.

This is one preseason game that was actually arguably even worse than the 38-20 final score, considering that the Texans played their starters much longer than the Saints played their first teamers and still wobbled into halftime trailing 28-10. Unfortunately, no NFL team gets to face Matt Leinart every week.

The Texans' defense isn't as bad as it showed in the Superdome against the defending Super Bowl champs' second string, but it's not nearly as good as the stats from the last few months of the 2009 season say either. Gary Kubiak's team is still very offense dependent. Which makes what the coach is doing with Andre Johnson even more baffling.

Forget Reggie Bush running through the Texans' defense like he was trying to shed Kim Kardashian all over again. Forget the 52-yard field goal that Neil Rackers knocked in off the upright, and the way Kris Brown actually responded to the pressure by hitting a 43-yarder later. The most striking scene from this game was Andre Johnson getting up gingerly after a mid second-quarter hit from the Saints superstar killer Tracy Porter.

It's a sight that begged the question: Why is Kubiak playing the best receiver in the NFL — this is what the Texans themselves tout Johnson as at every opportunity — that far into a preseason game?

It doesn't matter that Johnson appears to be all right, the mere fact that he's exposed to such risk is near lunacy. Is Kubiak trying to make Johnson earn that big new contract in the games that don't count?

What is the best receiver in the NFL going to learn in the second quarter of a preseason game? Does Kubiak really believe that Schaub and Johnson need to work on their timing? Johnson caught 101 passes for 1,569 yards and nine touchdowns last season, racked up 115 receptions for another 1,500-plus yards and eight touchdowns in 2008 (being noticeably more dangerous in the games Schaub played in '08). This duo is good.

They don't need to be treated like they're two-bit actors getting auditioned by James Cameron.

Let Schaub work on his connection with Jacoby Jones and Kevin Water if Kubiak must (though you can also argue that Schaub should have been gone just as quickly as Drew Brees was in this game), just keep Andre on the sideline.

When you've already proven you're one of the top players in the league at your position, you don't need to be exposed to preseason punishment.

Even Wayne Fontes — one of the most ridiculed coaches in NFL history — knew enough to not play Barry Sanders more than a few preseason snaps in Barry's prime. The Cowboys took the same approach with Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin.

Yes, the NFL's shifted toward playing stars more in the preseason in recent years, but that doesn't make Kubiak's choice to put the Texans' entire season on the line by throwing Johnson needlessly into harm's way any more intelligent.

Is this a little thing? Maybe — until Johnson gets hurt. But it's one of the many little things that put Kubiak's grasp of big picture coaching into question.

unspecified

Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

---

Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

movies film