Little Giants
Rick Moranis and Ed O'Neill as feuding brothers coaching rival pee-wee football teams in Urbania, Ohio; Icebox, the girl who got cut for being a girl; a bus full of real NFL stars; and a trick play called the Annexation of Puerto Rico. It didn't earn back its budget in theaters, but it never left the kid-sports canon.
Little Giants started as a commercial. Jim Ferguson and Bob Shallcross developed a McDonald's spot for the 1992 Super Bowl, and according to The Baltimore Sun, Steven Spielberg saw it and called them: "I want that commercial made into a movie. I want my 'Home Alone.'" Amblin produced, Warner Bros. released it under its Family Entertainment label, Duwayne Dunham directed, and the film shot from May 10 to September 3, 1994, for an October 14 opening.
Ed O'Neill plays Kevin O'Shea, a Heisman winner and the pride of Urbania, who coaches the Pee-Wee Cowboys and cuts his niece Becky, nicknamed Icebox, purely because she is a girl. Rick Moranis is his younger brother Danny, the gas-station owner who forms a team of rejects, the Little Giants, so the town can see there is another O'Shea who can win. A "one town, one team" league rule forces a playoff between them. Along the way there is Spike Hammersmith, the brute who won't play with a girl; Junior Floyd, the quarterback Becky quits the team over; and a bus that pulls up carrying John Madden, in his feature-film debut, with Emmitt Smith, Bruce Smith, Tim Brown and Steve Emtman. The brothers bet Kevin's Chevrolet dealership against Danny's gas station. Down 21 at halftime, the Giants claw back, Becky drops her pom-poms to suit up, and the game ends on the Annexation of Puerto Rico, a hook-and-lateral through three ball carriers inspired by Tom Osborne's fumblerooski, for a 99-yard touchdown. The water tower gets repainted "Home of The O'Shea Brothers."
The reviews were mixed — The New York Times called it "slickly contrived," the Los Angeles Times "smarter than many of its ilk" — and the numbers were worse: $19.3 million against a $20 million budget. Warner released the tape on February 7, 1995, with a One Froggy Evening cartoon up front, and the film resurfaced in a 2011 kids' sports-movie four-pack. The Cowboys' uniforms were the real Dallas Cowboys' 1994 throwbacks, worn that season for the NFL's 75th anniversary, and in 2010 Michigan State beat Notre Dame in overtime on a fake field goal that coach Mark Dantonio said was called "Little Giants."
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