| Home Team | |
| Director: | Allan A. Goldstein |
| Screenplay: | Jeff Lewis Pierce O'Donnell |
| Starring: | Steve Guttenberg Sophie Lorain Ryan Slater |
| Editing: | Richard Comeau |
| Runtime: | 91 minutes |
| Country: | Canada |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $4 million[1] |
Home Team is a 1998 comedy film starring Steve Guttenberg.
Mr. Butler is a former pro soccer player whose reputation for partying and gambling has caught up with him. He is sentenced to a year of probation, which includes working as a handyman in a dilapidated boys' home. Karen runs the home for a group of eleven boys whose parents could not raise them for some reason. Karen wants the boys to do something meaningful so she persuades them to start a soccer team known simply as "Home Team". They are terrible, but Mr. Butler, who has concealed his skills so far, is persuaded to coach the team, which eventually improves. A fire damages the home to the point that it must be torn down, and the boys will be separated, but efforts are made to keep the boys together. In a rematch, Home Team ends up defeating the first team they played on the way to a possible championship. The boys' cook Cookie, who likes to bet on horse races, made a bet with a Las Vegas bookie that Home Team would win; his winnings will be enough to get them a new house.
Home Team was filmed in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.[2] 15-year old Ryan Slater in the film is also the half-brother of actor Christian Slater.[1]
Screenwriter (and attorney) Pierce O'Donnell, who wrote the script in 1994, filed suit against the Canadian producer group in 2000, regarding allegedly unfair accounting practices in the film's development costs.[3]
The French title of the movie is "Une combinaison gagnante" (A winning combination) and the German name is Home Team – Ein treffsicheres Team (An unerring team).
The Wallflower critical guide to contemporary North American directors (2000) notes that Home Team was "little known" at that time.[4] VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (2004) writes that the movie has a "familiar plot but that's not necessarily bad."[5] The Radio Times Guide To Film (2007) opined that "Hollywood still hasn't got the hang of football (or soccer, as they insist on calling it) and this family-oriented frolic is decidedly minor league."[6]
Efilmcritic.com's 2001 review of the film was especially biting, calling it "an affront to film making".[7]