"Draft Day" Throwback Review

Ivan Reitman is a weird director as he has quite a few great movies on his resume, but I don't think any of those movies are great because of him. Ghostbusters is all about the cast and Dave works because of Kevin Kline's performance and Gary Ross' script. Reitman is a director that is elevated by other people's work and not the other way around.

Draft Day doesn't give Reitman much to work with. A move of unintentional comedy is his use of split-screen blocking during phone calls. It's very similar to what Ang Lee did with Hulk, and we all know how well that turned out.

Jennifer Garner, who's almost 20 years younger than Kevin Costner, is completely wasted in a role that could be entirely cut out of the movie. Her role as the "tough girl who knows football and is one of the boys" seems to be out of desperation by the writers to prevent this movie from being a total sausage fest. I'm not saying characters like her shouldn't be in sports movies, they just need to be better written than this one.

Cementing this movie's status as a pure dad flick is Kevin Costner at the helm, who does exactly what you expect him to. Costner has always been good in sports movies, and it shows here. It's fun to watch him try to wheel and deal his way through a myriad of problems.

This movie could've used more Chadwick Boseman, which is a statement I could say for a lot of movies.

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