The Big Green

When a new movie rips off an older movie, it is bound to pale in comparison. And when the movie being ripped off was pretty pale to begin with, the result is never pretty.

So it is with "The Big Green," which steals shamelessly from "The Mighty Ducks" and "Little Big League" — neither of which was original to begin with.

"The Big Green" is innocuous enough but it's also as dull as watching a peewee soccer game when none of the kids are yours.

The story has Olivia d'Abo as an "exchange teacher" from England who is assigned to teach in a small rural Texas town where the population is so small that classes are combined.

The kids (familiar faces from "The Sandlot," "The Little Rascals," etc.) all think of themselves as losers, and d'Abo decides to use her soccer skills to buck them up. Initially, they are terrible but after awhile — and with the help of one ringer — they gradually improve.

Steve Guttenberg, whom we haven't seen in awhile (and this hardly seems like the best choice for a comeback), plays the local deputy sheriff, who also just happens to be a former high school football star. One look at d'Abo and he volunteers to help coach the team.

And wouldn't you know it, when their team plays against its main competition in an Austin league, the other coach turns out to be an old high school nemesis of Guttenberg's (played by Jay O. Sanders).

Meanwhile, soap opera subplots include the revelation that the mother of the team's star player is an illegal alien and a troubled young girl whose alcoholic father neglects her. All such story threads are predictably sappy and will, naturally, come to happy endings.

Writer-director Holly Goldberg Sloan (screenwriter of "Angels in the Outfield") makes an undistinguished directing debut, using speeded-up film and goofy music to inform the audience that what's happening on the screen is supposed to be funny. She also dwells far too long on the lame antics on the playing field, while her screenplay fails to flesh out characters or explain situations.

That d'Abo would be teaching in this no-horse town seems unlikely at best. And what's Guttenberg's story? From his rumpled, unshaven, out-of-shape appearance, he seems to be on the back-end of some kind of drunken disappointment, but nothing is ever explained.

The one clever element here is the goalie's fantasies, as his fear turns opposing team members into pirates or dark knights or zombies. Other gags about flatulence or stepping in cow dung or having one of the team members express himself primarily by burping are less clever.

"The Big Green" is rated PG for mild vulgarity, one mild profanity and comic violence.