Rotten Tomatoes audience rating: 28%
This is a made-for-TV sequel to Angels in the Outfield, and I think the simplest way to summarize this movie's plot is to point out the ways it differs from its forerunner:
1. Angels in the Outfield was about a baseball team called the Angels. Angels in the Endzone is about a football team called the Angels.
2. Angels in the Outfield was about professional athletes. This is about high school athletes.
3. Angels in the Outfield revolved around a kid who had been abandoned by his father. Angels in the Endzone is about two kids whose father is dead.
4. Angels in the Outfield was good.
Beyond that, you can just import all of your knowledge of the plot of the previous movie into the entry for this one. But if you'd like a little bit more information, read on.
Jesse (Matthew Lawrence) and Kevin (the kid from Richie Rich's Christmas Wish) are two brothers who have a perfect relationship with their father. He loves them, he teaches them to play football, and in general he spends copious amounts of Time with His Children. In fact, their relationship is so perfect, that the only conceivable conclusion is that this character is going to die in the first act.
And so he does, sending Jesse into a deep depression. He quits the (jaw-droppingly incompetent) high school football team before their first game, he becomes distant from his family, and he ditches class to hang out with the bad kids. These lowlifes make their living betting against the home team, taking advantage of the school-spirited freshmen who are naive enough to think the Angels have a prayer of winning.
About three quarters of the way through the movie, they graduate from book-making to robbing a gas station. They've dragged Jesse along for the ride, and for a few minutes we're led to believe he's been implicated in the crime, but no—his mom and the police immediately accept his (true) version of events, and nothing comes of it. I mention this not because it's interesting, but because it's a good example of the amount of thought that seems to have gone into the story.
As for the other brother, Kevin, his role is limited entirely to replicating Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character from the first movie. Jesse tells the boy that their family will never be okay until the day the Westfield Angels win the state championship. This, of course, parallels a similar line delivered by the deadbeat dad in Outfield. In that movie, young JoGo misunderstood his dad's sarcasm and prayed for the Angels to win the Pennant, but here, it's not really clear what Kevin thinks. I don't think he really believes that his family's well-being is connected to the football championship, but he prays for the team to win. It's almost as if he's aware that what he's doing is required by the plot.
Just like in the first movie, the real angels take to the field to perform obviously impossible feats, but no one in the stands is the wiser. (At one point, the football flies literally the entire length of the field under its own power, and no one seems to question how this is possible.) Somehow the divine manipulation of sporting events seems even more inappropriate when it's a bunch of teenagers the angels are cheating against. Then there is the obligatory subplot about how the adults think Kevin is hallucinating (including an appalling scene where a school counselor puts the moves on Kevin's widowed mother).
All the while, Jesse refuses to rejoin his team, because football brings up painful memories of his father. Finally, the coach has a heart-to-heart with Jesse and reminds him that his father was proud of his talent and would want him to continue playing The Game of Football. So Jesse agrees to play the championship game, which he wins without the help of the angels.
I guess this is all right for a made-for-TV movie. The guy who plays the coach gives a workmanlike performance, and the mom isn't bad. There is also an assistant coach who seems to be channeling Harold from the Red Green Show; I could have done without him. The main brothers are fine.
One other thing: For a movie about divine beings, Angels in the Outfield didn't really have much religious content. This one seems to have more of a Calvinist attitude. There's a scene where Jesse blames himself for his father's accident, and his mother—rather than just reminding Jesse that he wasn't responsible—insists that nothing could have prevented his death. It's a pretty jarringly fatalistic comment, and the movie just leaves it at that. Maybe the kid from Seventh Heaven had a subconscious effect on the writers.
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