DUBAI: The race for the next “Ted Lasso” continues with “Chad Powers,” which seems like it was put together by a bunch of Disney execs based on focus-group results. Sports? Check (American football). Humor? Check. Recognizable storyline that plays well across demographics? Check. Recognizable star who plays well across demographics? Double-check (Glen Powell plays two roles.)
Fortunately, “Chad Powers” is not as horrific as that scenario sounds. And that’s largely due to the undeniable charisma of its star and co-creator. Powell brings his A-game to a pretty flimsy and derivative plot, and the result is a surprisingly layered take on an old idea.
Powell is Russ Holliday, star quarterback at a major US college whose talent is matched by his narcissism. He manages to ruin his chances of a pro career by melting down in spectacular fashion at a televised championship game, punching a fan into a wheelchair-bound kid with cancer.
Time passes and Holliday is working for his dad — a prosthetics specialist for Hollywood movies with whom he has a shaky relationship at best. Russ is asked to deliver some of said prosthetics to a movie studio. On his drive there, he sees (a) a report that the floundering South Georgia Catfish are holding an open call for a new quarterback and (b) a poster for “Mrs. Doubtfire” (in which Robin Williams’ character disguises himself as an old Scottish woman to maintain contact with his kids following the breakdown of his marriage). You see where this is going?
You do.
Holliday heads to South Georgia, where he dons a wig and prosthetics and becomes Chad Powers, a bumpkin who has rarely left the house at which he was home-schooled (a ruse dreamed up with the help of the team’s mascot, Danny — the only person who knows Chad is really Russ). Cue various set-pieces in which Chad must avoid losing his prosthetics or wig.
And Russ needs not only to maintain his disguise, but to nurture a character entirely unlike his own — i.e. humble, likeable, and a team player. Powell convinces both as the preening braggard Russ and the shy, mumbling Chad.
Along the way, of course, lessons are learned and opportunities open up, including a possible romance with the head coach’s daughter, Ricky (Perry Mattfeld). Which sounds cheesy, but the show manages — sometimes — to undercut its often-easy choices with an uneasy tension that makes “Chad Powers” more than the sum of its unimaginative parts.
