Field of Dreams 2: Lockout (2011) Online

So, there I was typing Field of Dreams into the IMDb search engine, when my eye spots that this film is one of the returned results. Like most people, my heart sank with the thought of them trying to make money off this film with what i presume is going to be a rubbish sequel that not only fails on its own terms, but drags the original down with it. Finding the film on the internet though I was happy to see the Funny or Die logo and realised it was just a spoof trailer. Focusing on football instead of baseball, this trailer sees a rather less romantic version of the story play out than in the original film; here we have the football players in the house and much of the NFL nonsense happening on the corn field.

There are some very funny moments in this short that involve physical humour and jokes that are basically to do with seeing things associated with the big NFL stadiums but now seeing them played out on a cornfield. Such things have been done before but they still work here. In terms of the film references I was in two minds because I do love Field of Dreams – so yes the final shot was a funny line, but at the same time I wasn't sure I liked the idea of it! It was nice to have all the big names even if I didn't recognise any of the football players; I thought Liotta and Costner were good sports to do it – although I wish the former had a better couple of lines since the "joke" just appeared to be that he was there.

Overall this is a fun little short film that I was very glad to find was not a real sequel! I didn't totally like it messing with such a good film, but I laughed several times per minute, which makes it well worth seeing.

Field of Dreams 2: Lockout (2011)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Mildly charming three-minute short has the NFL on strike so an Iowa farmer (Taylor Lautner) builds a football field and soon various players come to play. These players include Ray Lewis, Tony Gonzalez, Steve Smith and others.

If you're a fan of the original film then you'll probably get a few smiles out of this short, which is obviously paying homage to that film as well as making fun of the (then) situation going on with football. There's certainly nothing ground-breaking about this film but it was just meant to be something fun and for the most part it is. There are a couple people from the original film that make cameos here but I won't spoil who is it.

"Field of Dreams 2: Lockout" is another Funnyordie spoof movie from 4 years ago and as most of the others, it only runs for a very short time, 3 minutes in this case. Taylor Lautner plays the main character and some famous football players are in here as well. The makers thought nobody would recognize them, so they had not only Lautner say their names loudly, but also write the names in the end again. Ray Liotta appears in here as well and so does Kevin Costner near the end, the star of the original "Field of Dreams" from over 25 years ago. Oh well, Taylor Lautner was certainly a bigger star back in 2011 than he is now thanks to the "Twilight" series. The director of this little movie is Eric Appel, who I am not familiar with, and he also wrote the script. Or co-wrote I should say as 3 writers worked on this 3-minute movie. Yet the outcome is not that funny really. This would be a Die. Not recommended.