#touchback

Beckett de Luca! 

An upcoming webcomic from myself and @diastrons: Touchback! 

Touchback is a webcomic that explores university, childhood mistakes, and moving forward.

Drew Powell

Facts

January 19, 1976

American actor

Filmography

Anthony [High Town: 2020]

Butch [Gotham: 2014-2018]

Bud [Man Jam: 2015]

Pierson [Touchback: 2011]

Hoss [Ponderosa: 2001-2002]

Drew [Malcom in the Middle: 2000-2001]

Appearance

brunette

blue eyes

1,90m

Roleplay

While I didn't enjoy this film, that doesn't mean you won't. No matter what I say, the people involved in this project did it: they actually made a movie. That's something to be applauded. With that established...

What Touchback wanted to be got lost in the narrative somewhere. It’s sort of It’s a Wonderful Life combined with Friday Night Lights with a touch of romance and one of those “small town sentiment” stories and the mix reacts horribly, creating toxic fumes that threaten your life.

Scott Murphy (Brian Presley) is about to lose his home, bad weather has destroyed his crops and he’s run out of hope. Attempting suicide, he wakes up in 1991, on the eve of the big game. Last time, a leg injury prevented him from ever leaving the small town of Coldwater, Ohio and forced him to let go of all his dreams. Will Scott attempt to change the past?

I guess the moral here is that if bad things happen, you should just accept them and never dream of a better existence. Touchback begins by showing us that Scott’s life is as bad as it could be. He’s got a bum leg, he’s still living in the same small town he dreamed of escaping since he was a teen, his high school sweetheart wound up marrying his best friend and they’re both rich, he made some poor farming decisions and until harvest time, he has no money to pay for anything… it’s so bad he decides to quit life, literally. Transported to 1991, you’d expect him to see this as a second chance. That’s not what this movie is about.

The film is badly cast, with the 35-year-old Brian Presley playing a teenager and the rest of the actors being equally unconvincing. This doesn't help Touchback but the film is flawed to the core. It wants to give this lesson about appreciating your life for the ups and the downs. A now young Scott looks at his girlfriend Jenny (Sarah Wright) and immediately says “Nah”, focussing instead on winning over his future wife. I think we’re supposed to cheer for this sentiment. He’s so in love with her he can’t even wait until their “actual” first date and needs to be with her NOW… but need I remind you that his life with her was so bad he ended up killing himself? This may be the first time travel film I’ve ever seen that never deals with the actual concept of time travel. The guy’s acting like this whole thing is a dream but he knows it isn’t! Then again, considering the film’s ending… oh I don’t even know anymore.

Touchback is a giant tease. Of course, suicide is bad but it dedicates so much time to Scott being miserable that you desperately want him to change his life, but then spends so little time showing how happy he was with his wife and two daughters you don’t understand why he’s keen on finding them again. Combined with the bad casting, characters whose actions make no sense (still can’t figure out what Scott’s mother, played by Christine Lahti, is doing in this movie) and the football story composed entirely of clichés (and, embarrassingly enough prominently features Kurt Russell as the coach) and you have a movie so off-kilter you’ve never seen anything like it… because no one in their right mind would’ve made the choices writer/director Don Handfield did. It’s a bad movie, but in a memorable way, which is a good thing… I think. (On DVD, February 21, 2018)