MR. BRIGHTSIDE
This sports comedy transplants its title character (Jason Sudeikis) from coaching a lower-tier Kansas college football program to managing a Premier League soccer team in England. What at first seems an implausible career shift instead proves the whole point of the thing, as ice-queen owner Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) is trying to sabotage the club’s fortunes by hiring a man she assumes is an unqualified yokel. (In other words, it’s the plot of Major League, dusted off for a new generation.) What Rebecca doesn’t count on — and what proves both a help and a hindrance to
Ted Lasso — is that Ted is . . . nice. Pathologically nice. The type who remembers everyone’s name and life story, who brings his boss delicious cookies each morning, and whose wife needs a break from the marriage because, as Ted admits, “My constant optimism is too much.” Ted’s relentless kindness — a marked change from the 2013 NBC Sports short film that introduced him as an obnoxious bumbler — keeps making Rebecca question her plan, and it also makes the underdog sports story being told by Sudeikis and Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence watchable throughout the usual clichés about team chemistry, the young talent who needs to learn to play unselfishly, and the proud veteran on his last legs. But Sudeikis and Lawrence haven’t figured out how to translate Ted’s new Jimmy Stewart-like decency into laughs, making for a pleasant but largely forgettable experience.