Sometimes sports and movies just shouldn’t mix

Having a minimum-wage summer job is a lot like listening to Coldplay: Everyone does it, but nobody likes to talk about it. My journey to a low point in self-respect had me sporting a blue-collared shirt and a name tag. For three grueling months this past summer, I worked at Blockbuster Video.

Though the job unfortunately did require me to pretend like I cared whether a snobby trophy wife and her three demonic children were finding everything alright, I did get to rent many videos for free.

Seeing that my social life at home had gone the way of the dodo and UCLA football’s offense, I was able to watch some of the greatest movies ever made about sports. These are not them.

5. “Summer Catch” – I hate Freddie Prinze Jr. What I hate even more is Freddie Prinze Jr. trying to be Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh from “Bull Durham.” This corny “coming of age” flick about a poor Cape Cod pitcher trying to make it in a rookie baseball league while simultaneously trying to date a rich girl who is way out of his league is terribly trite and dreadfully acted. The movie is as predictable as the UCLA-Oklahoma game.

The saving grace: Jessica Biel. The former “7th Heaven” star plays Tenley Parrish, the rich “daddy’s girl” that Prinze Jr. courts despite the disapproval of her father. Biel doesn’t act well or have any on-screen presence but instead makes “Summer Catch” barely bearable simply by being good-looking.

4. “Rollerball” – This movie strengthens my support of euthanasia. Mercy should have been brought to audiences suffering through this appalling remake. I have seen cardboard boxes give better performances than lifeless star Chris Klein’s. The film was terribly edited, which made it difficult to follow the thin shred of plot that director John McTiernan decided to include.

The saving grace: Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is ridiculously hot.

3. “Caddyshack 2” – Whoever told Jackie Mason that he was funny lied. This PG-rated follow-up to the funniest movie ever made about golf should have been cancelled long before it came close to a silver screen. Thank God Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Murray were smart enough to avoid this travesty of a sequel.

Mason, who tries oh-so-hard to imitate Dangerfield from the original “Caddyshack,” failed miserably, and without Murray’s groundskeeper Carl Spackler, the movie ends up as a triple-bogey.

The saving grace: There is no saving grace. This was a terrible, terrible movie.

2. “The Replacements” – The major theme of this flop was token characters. Keanu Reeves plays the token quarterback looking to redeem his failed career. Reeves shows slightly less emotion than the goalposts, and his attempt at being meaningful with a hackneyed “glory lives forever” speech is laughable. There is a token foreigner (the Welshman who spouts such momentous lines as “You just hold it and I’ll kick the bloody piss out of it!”), a token comic relief black guy (Orlando Jones as a speedy receiver with no hands) and even a token likeable handicapped guy (a deaf tight end).

This poorly told story of likeable losers tries to be a PG-13 version of “Little Giants” but fails horribly. Anytime you can’t live up to a Rick Moranis movie, you know that something is terribly wrong. There was a lot terribly wrong with “The Replacements.”

1. “Major League 3: Back to the Minors” – The worst sports movie ever made for one unforgivable reason: It ruined one of the best sports movies ever made. “Major League” (the 1989 comedy starring Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen and Wesley Snipes) is one of the funniest baseball movies ever made.

“Back to the Minors” is a futile attempt to cash in on “Major League” and its sequel, “Major League II.” Basically, “Major League 3: Back to the Minors” is “Godfather III,” a wholly unforgivable blemish in an otherwise great string of cinematic successes.

OK, Graham-Caso secretly loved “Summer Catch.” Jessica Biel really is that hot. E-mail David at dgrahamcaso@media.ucla.edu if you agree.