True throwbacks

The Longest Yard (Adam Sandier, Chris Rock, Burr Reynolds; release date May 27)

Happy Gilmore trades in his golf club for the pigskin in this remake of the 1974 film also starring Reynolds. Pro quarterback turned prisoner Paul Crewe (Sandler) assembles a team of inmates to take on the guards of a West Texas prison in a football game. Hilarity ensues. Rock plays a guy who says he was "so bad in sports, they used to pick me after the white kids." And rapper Nelly, who played football in high school, takes a break from shaking his tailfeather to make an appearance as the inmates' running back.

Herbie: Fully Loaded (Lindsay Lohan; release date June 24)

You might know Lohan as the table-dancing, Wilmer Valderrama-dating party girl with a family straight out of a soap opera. But she acts, too--and does a pretty good job of it. In a takeoff on Disney's old Herbie movies, she plays the owner of a Volkswagen bug (with a mind of its own, of course) on the NASCAR circuit. Everyone who's anyone in NASCAR (including Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson) makes an appearance.

The Bad News Bears (Billy Bob Thornton, Greg Kinnear; release date summer 2005)

In the year's other big remake (of the 1976 film starring Walter Matthau), Thornton stars as an ex-ballplayer who tries to manage a misfit team of little leaguers. How can they top the first one? you might wonder. Think of it this way: It's quite possible that the average high school kid today has never even heard of, let alone seen, the original. Now, don't you feel old?

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