The individual scenes are better than the movie as a whole. ** out of ****

Rating: 5/10 (15 September 1999)

FOR LOVE OF THE GAME (1999) **
Starring: Kevin Costner, Kelly Preston, John C. Reilly, Jena Malone, and Brian Cox Director: Sam Raimi ??? minutes Rated PG-13 (for language and sensuality)
By Blake French:
Sam Raimi has proven to us that he is a very capable director with movies like "A Simple Plan." The same goes for Kevin Costner, who has acted beautifully in movies like "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" and "Field of Dreams." Also, Kelly Preston ("Jack Frost"), John C. Reilly (Never Been Kissed") , and Jena Malone ("Stepmom") are all fine actors on the rise. Not to mention, this production is one of the most anticipated of the early fall movie season. With all this going for it, "For Love of the Game" should have been one heck of a drama...but, unfortunately, it's not. And it is a real disappointment considering the potential involved with the production.

"For Love of the Game" reunites the popular romantic star Kevin Costner with the Baseball genre that affected audiences so immensely in the 1989 wonder "Field of Dreams." This movie may have struck big with audiences as well, if only, it had more Baseball in it. The film has one main game of Baseball included in its story, and oh, what a wonderful game it is. The tension arises with Costner being the soon-to-retire, forty year old pitcher named Billy Chapel, who is right in the middle of throwing a perfect game for the team of Detroit at what might just the end of his career.

Also accruing: Chapel's long time girlfriend, Jane Aubrey, and her daughter, Heather, are leaving him to go to London for reasons entirely prepared by the writers in order to create an internal problem as well as Chapel's presumed retirement serving as an external problem. Pretty standard structure so far--if the filmmakers were to continue with this almost perfect beginning this movie would have lived up to its possibilities.

But no. Right in the middle of the intriguing Ball game Billy is pitching for, his wondering mind propels a series of flashbacks that literally kill the production's hope of existing even as a half price video rental. It does three things that screw up the movie's overall point of view:
1) Billy's flashbacks tell of the love story between him and Jane--a subject that happened over five years ago. Shouldn't that be before the ball game taking place in present day? If you're going to develop a relationship between two characters, it should transpire in a logical, easy to understand order of events. Costner got this correct when he starred in this year's much better romantic journey "Message in a Bottle," but that film had little romantic chemistry. Here, he seems to be a puppet of the plot, but he and Kelly Preston are bursting at the seems with likable chemistry.
2) The flashbacks are somewhat irrelevant and disturb the intense tension that the Ball game contains; I was begging that Costner would focus long enough on present day to allow us to become involved in what is interesting--no luck here.
3) The scenes add too many complications like:
A) Jane's runaway daughter who leaves her overly-protective mother after they have a big fight (which we never see, thus no empathy can relate). She runs off to her fathers, a junkie who is said to be stoned ninety percent of the time (whom we never meet, thus no reason to compare or take sides with the characters). These events are prepared for us by the prop department who obey the writers' commands. In this case, the filmmakers need a reason for Jane and Billy to see each other again. Instead of developing romantic chemistry by adding confrontations with Jane and Billy, they give us irrelevant coincidences.
B) During most of the flashbacks, Jane and Billy are not being developed, but fighting, arguing and destroying their relationship like a married couple. The sub-plots involved with these flashbacks should develop their relationship, not mutilate it.
C) There is a major accident involving Billy and his hand. This incident is also prepared by the props department due to a need to trigger an effect that will have dastardly effects on Billy and Jane's relationship.

Most of the film has chemistry and reason to its happenings and events. They just don't happen in the right order to make the film fit together like an actual story offbeat love story. The beginning and the end are great--but the middle is a disaster. Kevin Costner and Kelly Preston do what they can to keep the script in active motion, but even they are no match for poor screenwriting. It even goes for a desperate bookend sequence (if you don't know what a "bookend" is, E-mail me) that is supposed to trend the scenes together, but that is way off whack. The closing scene is of the best I've seen all year; the sneak preview audience that I attended with was cheering happily for the characters. I was thinking to myself that this is a movie is too ridiculous to recognize the emotional power of its closing--and that its conclusion belongs in a better production.
Brought to you by Universal Pictures.