Ed (1996)

It’s never a good sign for a sports team if they need a wild animal to help them win games. Such is the case with the Santa Rosa Rockets, a minor league baseball franchise in every sense of the word.

Managed by Jack Warden, they’re doomed to be basement dwellers even after acquiring a new starting pitcher with a wicked fastball.

In what has easily been the most questionable decision he’s ever made in his career, Matt LeBlanc picked this embarrassing travesty as his first feature film after finally breaking through on Friends. Courtney Cox held out for the Scream franchise. What’s his excuse?

Clearly living out an on-screen fantasy as a baseball player, LeBlanc obviously set aside all artistic standards he may have had for that big moment. You know the one that every cinematic underdog dreams about. Winning a championship against all the odds.

The problem is we’ve seen that story countless times before and it’s getting very tired indeed. In Ed, LeBlanc easily impresses the Rockets during his tryout despite being a farmboy without a proper uniform.

But during an actual game, he routinely craps out. He’s not fooling anybody at the plate. After the damage is done, he’s always taken out before the game is over by a reliever who would rather have his job. (By the way, what’s going on with his face? Why is he so overly tanned when he’s almost always wearing a ballcap?)

Little does he know, his luck will abruptly change and not because he’s been reduced to rubbing a horseshoe. Early on, he’s asked to pick up the new mascot, a chimpanzee the franchise dubs Ed Sullivan purely, I believe, for a throwaway newspaper headline gag that probably went over the head of any poor kid subjected to this stupidity.

Right away, we have a major problem. That’s not a real monkey, it’s a smaller guy in a costume and it’s immediately distracting. Also, Ed’s not funny at all. In fact, he’s a nightmare to be around. LeBlanc not only has to bring him to the ballpark, he has to make him his roommate in his tiny apartment which doesn’t make any sense. Why is he stuck with him?

Ed is loud and energetic. He constantly breaks things. He also farts a lot. LeBlanc despises him so much he cruelly buys him a giant bag of dog food which he makes him carry home and upon being offered a sample is rightly rejected in an instant. He’d rather have LeBlanc’s TV dinners which don’t look any more appetizing.

Struggling to win a game, LeBlanc is also facing pressure on a different front. There’s a single MILF living in his apartment building (she’s a waitress in a local diner) and she’s been quietly wondering why they still haven’t hooked up yet. He’s so reluctant to make a move that her cute young daughter openly asks him, “Are you gay?”

It’s weird seeing a kid play matchmaker this aggressively when LeBlanc has enough stress in his life. (And what happened to her dad, anyway?) But he eventually gives in and of course, things go well at the carnival. That said, would you leave your child alone with a wild, undisciplined animal? The kid’s lucky he’s friendly and not real. He’s immature, not an actual threat.

Ed has a secret. He can actually play, up to a certain point. The gag is he belonged to Mickey Mantle who apparently taught him how to play third base. He certainly didn’t teach him how to hit. In his one at-bat, because of his extremely low strike zone, he gets a game-winning walk without ever taking a swing, which turns the tide for the Rockets now destined for redemption. Tommy LaSorda eventually becomes interested in their revived star pitcher.

However, future Jesus Jim Caviezel will not be joining them. Despite encouraging LeBlanc to go on using Carlton Fisk as an inspiration, he gets cut from the team not even halfway through the movie. Imagine the humiliation of being the only player who gets fired, especially when your hairy replacement becomes a star attracting national media attention.

Then, most insanely, Ed gets sold to some abusive circus folk by the weird guy from Frasier, the son of the owner, now sporting a toupee so obvious it openly invites lazy mockery.

By this point, LeBlanc has suddenly softened his stance with the chimp, even allowing him to join him in bed at night. But it’s only after his new girlfriend, the single MILF, browbeats him into planning a risky rescue that he actually bothers to locate Ed and attempt to bring him back to the team.

But in the ensuing chaos as they flee a couple of goons, one of whom has already used a tazer on their purchased prisoner, the chimp, a frozen chocolate banana addict, gets accidentally locked up in a freezer truck leading to a bogus health crisis. With the single MILF’s cute daughter by his side at the hospital, everybody is waiting for him to wake up. This manipulative ploy only worked for E.T., you know, because we actually cared about him.

Even though Courtney Cox had made movies for years before Friends, LeBlanc was the first castmate to make one while the show was on the air. One wonders what he turned down in order to make this crap. To be fair, the much missed Matthew Perry made two zero-star stinkers of his own: Almost Heroes with Chris Farley and Serving Sara with Liz Hurley. But none of those turkeys starred a guy pretending to repeatedly fart in a fake monkey costume.

Opening in March 1996 and tanking immediately (it didn’t even make 5 million dollars), I vividly remember LeBlanc appearing on Regis & Kathie Lee at the time trying to sell Ed as something worth paying to see with a straight face. He knew this sucked. He knew he fucked up.

Rightly nominated for four Razzies, Ed should’ve had a clean sweep. Spare a thought for poor Cockroach from The Cosby Show who plays either the shortstop or the second baseman, not that it really matters. And Bill Cobb, too, the second-in-command behind Warden. I hope they never listed this on their resumes.

Ed hasn’t been the only animal sports comedy. A year later came the first of many Air Bud movies. I didn’t like that one, either, but at least it had laughs and some charm, just not enough of the former. And say what you will about the hockey-playing chimp in MVP, Ed is more unbearable.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, March 18, 2024
4:00 a.m.