THE REPLACEMENTS

1/2

Formulaic but surprisingly charming and enjoyable football romp about a team of misfits given a chance at glory by an NFL strike.

Running time: 109 minutes. Rated PG-13. At the Loews 42nd Street, the 86th Street East, the Battery Park City, others.

FOR all its pleasures, “The Replacements” won’t replace “North Dallas Forty” “Semi-Tough” or even “The Longest Yard” in the canon of classic football movies.But despite a slow start, a shamelessly formulaic plot and what looks like some heavy-handed last-minute editing (here and there, you see the beginnings and endings of vanished subplots), it manages to be great fun – indeed, one of the most enjoyable entertainments of the summer.

It achieves this by recycling and binding into a genial and effective whole tried and true elements from “Slap Shot,” “The Bad News Bears,” “Longest Yard” and various other successful sports films and inserting them into a story line inspired by the 1987 NFL strike.

Even the pounding sound track is such a compilation of popular “jock jams” that there are times when the movie feels like a long music video. Still, although every sports cliché you’ve ever seen is here (especially “heart” triumphing over talent), it somehow doesn’t matter: You end up cheering for Keanu Reeves and his motley crew of scab players.

With the playoffs approaching, the Washington Sentinels have just gone on strike. So owner Ed O’Neil calls in Jimmy McGinty (Gene Hackman), a coach he once fired, to recruit a team of amateurs, has-beens and coulda-beens happy to cross a picket line.

McGinty has an amazing memory for once-promising high school and college players, and quickly assembles a wacky, multicultural group, including Bateman (Jon Favreau), a dumb super-aggressive cop, and Wilkinson (Michael Jace), a hardened criminal allowed out of the penitentiary just to play football.

There’s also a sumo wrestler (Ace Yonamine), a lightning-fast but cowardly and butterfingered ghetto thief (Orlando Jones), a talented but stone-deaf wide receiver (David Denman) and gun-toting twins who work as music industry bodyguards (Michael Taliferro and Faizon Love).

But the team’s stars are Reeve’s quarterback, Shane Falco (where do moviemakers get these names?) and chain-smoking soccer player turned kicker Nigel “The Leg” Gruff, (“Notting Hill’s” Rhys Ifans).

There seems to be a cheerleaders’ strike, too, because Annabelle, the head of the squad (Brooke Langton), is forced to recruit a bunch of sexy stripper/hookers to do the job.

Can Reeves unite the team and control his own tendency to choke at key moments? Will he persuade the lovely Annabelle to break a self-imposed ban on dating players? Will the replacement Sentinels be able to withstand the harassment of the horrible, arrogant regular players? (Of course, unlike those greedy millionaire players, the billionaire owners are just in it for the game …)

Reeves is as stolid and likable as ever. Hackman, as always, brings an amazing amount of class and conviction to a skimpily written role. And Langton (TV’s “Melrose Place” and “The Net”) is so natural and appealing as Annabelle that she’s a sure bet for future female leads on the big screen.

The football scenes are choreographed and directed by Allan Graf, the master who made the game look so exciting in “Any Given Sunday” and “Jerry Maguire.”

The only thing in the film that leaves a slightly sour taste in your mouth – especially with Hollywood unions considering a strike next summer – is the way it glorifies scabs and unabashedly takes the side of management, painting pro-football players as overpaid and spoiled brats who during the strike “return to their castles and private jets.”

It conveniently ignores the fact that most players aren’t millionaire superstars, and are finished and semi-crippled by 40.