Made by a trio of friends who are not as funny as they seem to think, “10 Yards”is an awkward documentary about fantasy football that plays more like an amateur home video than a non-fiction film.
Following the fantasy football misadventures of three college friends, “10 Yards” does little to shed additional light on what is certainly a unique and dedicated nation-wide network of ardent football lovers. Chock full of annoying “diary cam” segments that feature the three friends waxing pseudo-seriously about their fantasy football woes, the viewer is quickly alienated and subjected to a series of flat jokes and absolutely awful improv, none of which is the least bit funny (I’m talking to you, guy making the cheesecake).
With the means of video production widely available and the internet providing a potential audience for every person who feels like turning the camera on themselves (or their friends), there’s no stopping the proliferation of these sorts of projects. I would never want to discourage somebody from picking up a camera and trying to tell a story. However, there’s a limit to what you can reasonably expect an audience (of strangers) to endure over the course of a 90-minute feature film.
Unfortunately, “10 Yards” doesn’t have a story to tell. It’s merely a series of random interviews with fantasy football fans that never bothers to delve into what makes them tick. Without this crucial element, 10 YARDS might as well be chopped up into You Tube-sized chunks and spread across the internet like so much fertilizer. But in this case, neither the parts nor the whole add up to much more than the sum of zero.
