Since featuring opposite Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick (2022) Glen Powell has become hot property in Hollywood. Through a string of box-office smashes that have taken in tornado-chasing fun (Twisters) and romantic antics with Sydney Sweeney (Anything but You), he’s positioned himself as a go-to heartthrob for Tinseltown producers. Alongside all that there has been a critically acclaimed crime comedy, Hit Man, co-written with the director Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused).
So why is he now wearing a prosthetic nose and putting on a silly voice? An Oscar bid? A charity telethon? No. He’s in a Disney+ sports comedy, of course.
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Chad Powers is the story of Russ Holliday (Powell), an arrogant and self-destructive American football player who spectacularly implodes his career in a big football final and then finds himself persona non grata in the sporting world. Years later we catch up with the “tabloid jackass” whose latest attempt at a comeback has been thwarted and who is still blaming the fans.
After some home truths from his father Mike, a Hollywood prosthetics guy (an underused Toby Huss: “the fans didn’t make you tweet that crap about Princess Diana”), Russ is inspired by a poster of Mrs Doubtfire to reinvent himself and try out for a college football team. Using his father’s wig and make-up he transforms himself into Chad Powers, the long-haired sub-Forrest Gump southerner with shades of Adam Sandler in The Waterboy, and manages to get himself on the team at the South Georgia Catfish.
