Marco (Javier Gutiérrez) is assistant coach at a top pro basketball club. Until he assaults the head coach during a match, gets drunk and drives into the back of a police car. the judge gives him a choice. Prison, or community service. He opts for the latter and finds himself coach to a 'team' with learning difficulties (or 'retards' in Marco-speak) in an underfunded community centre. Adding to his misery he's estranged from wife Sonia (Athenia Mata) and living with his ultra-critical mother.
It's not really giving spoilers away to say that Marco is transformed by his experience with his new charges, turns the team into a success and is reunited with Sofia, because this is an unabashedly feelgood film, wearing a gigantic red heart on it's sleeve. It's emotionally manipulative, heartwarming and redemptive. Add in the dangers of patronising a social group that endures enough mockery already, and the heavy handed 'message' the film hammers home, and I really shouldn't have liked this film.
But. It is very, very funny, and for all the right reasons. The team members, all non-professional actors, are shown as rounded human beings, and Gloria Ramos is simply wonderful as the piss-taking, ever resourceful Collantes. If anyone is being patronised it's the kind of emotionally constipated macho male that the Marco character represents. He emerges as the one with the biggest disability to overcome, helped by the wisdom of old community leader Julio and the quiet understanding of the tall, talented and enigmatic Román.
A huge dollop of Spanish fun.
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