While the film received generally positive reviews—78% on Rotten Tomatoes with a 98% Audience Score—it was released on Christmas Day 2021, where it had to compete with the juggernaut that was Spider-Man: No Way Home, as well as the release of The Matrix Resurrections and the animated sequel Sing 2, leading to pretty soft performance at the box office. Now Underdog is available for purchase through digital retailers such as Kaleidescape, which offers it in 4K HDR quality.

The film’s marketing implied it was going to be a “faith-based” story—“With the help of his family and his faith . . .”—which can be a bit polarizing for viewers. In reality, the aspect of Warner’s faith—and more so that of his girlfriend/wife Brenda—are pretty minor parts of the movie, and really shouldn’t be a factor swaying you one way or the other in your decision to watch.

While it will appeal to sports fan, with a fair bit of football action interspersed throughout, the film is definitely designed to have broader appeal. The story emphasizes Warner’s (Zachary Levi) struggles off the field as he tries to cope with life after football after graduating college and not being drafted to the pros, and managing a relationship with new girlfriend Brenda (Anna Paquin) and her two children, one of whom, Zack (Hayden Zaller), is blind. While football is the backdrop, the film’s heart is about perseverance, hard work, and believing in yourself and your abilities to accomplish a dream. I watched with my wife and daughter—neither of whom care about football—and the story was enough to keep them involved, though my wife did feel it was a little slow in the middle and a bit long overall.

Based on Warner’s book All Things Possible (he also gets a screenwriting credit here), the film starts with a young Warner watching Joe Montana lead the San Francisco 49ers to a victory—and earn an MVP title—in Super Bowl XIX, which causes Warner to make a commitment to one day become an MVP quarterback himself. He sets the stage of how difficult this dream is via a voiceover, saying that only 5% of players make it to college and then only 1% of those players make it to the pros. We then cut to Warner as a fifth-year senior as backup quarterback at the University of Northern Iowa, where seeing 40-plus-year-old Levi as a college senior was perhaps the film’s biggest stretch. The third act is interspersed with real footage of Warner playing, and while this can be a bit jarring from a picture- and sound-quality standpoint, it certainly lends another level of authenticity to the story. 

The 4K HDR video quality is mostly solid, with clean images; tight, sharp focus; and plenty of detail in closeups. My biggest complaint lies with the black levels, which are more often deep grey than true black. This is readily apparent during the opening credits when there is what should be a true black on screen but we get a dark grey instead—definitely noticeable in a light-controlled room watching on my OLED. This also flattens the depth of some of the dark or night scenes a bit. 

Otherwise, Underdog delivers the quality you’d expect from a modern 4K HDR title. Closeups reveal plenty of sharp detail, like the tight lines in the pattern of a flannel shirt, or the weave in a mesh-fabric football jersey, or the fine lines and wrinkles in faces. Bright outdoor scenes look great, whether it’s capturing a football practice or establishing shots as the camera pans in on a stadium.

Colors are bright and vibrant, like the green turf of the indoor Arena stadium, or the vivid yellows of the Packers helmets, or the deep, rich blues of the Rams uniforms. There are a few scenes inside of bars where overhead lights and neon signs are given plenty of room to shine with the HDR grade. 

One thing I did notice was a particular neon beer-bottle sign that exhibited some unusual and very noticeable black and blue circles and blobs. The sign is shown a few times and each time, it has obvious moving spots that aren’t visible in any other sign and which clearly aren’t part of its design. (You can see it, for instance, at the 26:54 and 1:39:13 marks.) It was distracting enough that I rewound the film to make sure it wasn’t some temporary glitch. Kaleidescape says these elements were present in the mezzanine source file provided to them by the studio, so it appears to be a gamut-clipping error captured in-camera and not part of the home transfer. 

Sonically, Underdog features a 5.1-channel DTS-HD Master track that isn’t overly dynamic, but does serves the story. Dialogue is delivered clean and intelligibly in the center channel, making it easy to understand all of the conversations. While there isn’t a ton of surround activity, the surround speakers—and height speakers if you’re using an upmixer—are used for some nice establishing atmosphere, with sounds of birds, wind, insects, traffic, and even planes far off in the distance that really help to open your listening space and establish the outdoor environment. There’s one scene where a blizzard blows through the town, and you can hear wind whipping through your listening space and lashing the walls around you, and the country music in the bar is also used to fill the room.

The audio’s intensity picks up when the action is on the football field and you hear the roars of the crowd all around you, other players yelling, and the crash and smash of bodies colliding. You also get a nice sense of the spatial and size difference between the crowds of the Arena games and the NFL.

As the title suggests, American Underdog is a feel-good story about a guy who follows his dream and succeeds in spite of all that life puts in his path. If you’re looking for a film to watch to get amped for the Big Game, you’d be hard-pressed to find one more apropos. With the Rams (now back in Los Angeles) playing the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl LVI this Sunday, the timing of Underdog’s home release couldn’t be any better if it had been scripted by a Hollywood writer.