The Longest Yard is a 2005 American sports comedy film remake of the 1974 film of the same name. Adam Sandler plays the protagonist, Paul Crewe, a disgraced former professional football quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL, who is forced to form a team from the prison inmates to play football against their guards.
　
Burt Reynolds, who played Adam Sandler's role in the original, plays a major role as Nate Scarborough, the head coach and a former Heisman Trophy winner for Oklahoma in 1955, and Chris Rock plays as Crewe's cell neighbor and friend known as Caretaker. The ensemble supporting cast includes James Cromwell, Nelly, William Fichtner and several former and current professional athletes such as Terry Crews (NFL), Michael Irvin (NFL), Brian Bosworth (NFL), Bill Romanowski (NFL), Bill Goldberg (NFL, WCW/WWE), Bob Sapp (NFL, MMA), Kevin Nash (Euro League Basketball, WCW/WWE), "Stone Cold" Steve Austin (ECW/WCW/WWE, college football at North Texas State University), and Dalip "The Great Khali" Singh Rana (WWE).
　
The film was released in North America by Paramount Pictures and worldwide by Columbia Pictures (the latter of which has released the majority of Sandler's films since the early 2000s).
　
Box office
The film did well at the box office. Its $47.6 million opening weekend was the largest of Sandler's career and only second to The Day After Tomorrow as the largest opening by a movie that was not #1. The film would go on to gross $158.1 million in the United States and Canada and $190 million worldwide. It was the highest grossing film produced by MTV Films, until it was surpassed by Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. Despite the large number of remakes released at the theaters, it's worth noting that The Longest Yard is the highest grossing comedy remake of the modern box office era (from 1980 on).
　
Critical response
The overall critical response was mixed. It received a 31% Freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes, though users, who rated it 67%, generally agreed that it was a play-by-play remake; the greatest complaint from critics was that it replaced the original's dark comedy and grit with juvenile humor and visual gags. Roger Ebert, in the critical minority with this title, gave it a "Thumbs Up", defending it later in his Chicago Sun-Times review as a film that "...more or less achieves what most of the people attending it will expect." In the print review, Ebert beseeches his readers to "...seek out a movie you could have an interesting conversation about", citing films not in wide release such as Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist and Kontroll, until finally encouraging his readers to "drop any thought of seeing anything else instead" if they can see Crash.