This could have been a contender...

Rating: 6/10 (8 July 2002)

I hate it when movies insult the audience's intelligence. This is what happened in this movie. I was really enjoying this movie until they went to spring training. Lakeland, Florida, is the spring training home of the Detroit Tigers and in this movie, it's your typical pristine Florida coastal town. Except, in real-life, Lakeland is smack-dab in the middle of Florida, about as far away from a sandy beach as you can get in the Sunshine State. I know. I grew up not thirty miles from Lakeland. My high school used to play their high school every year in all sports. Lakeland had the closest Best Buy to my hometown so I always would make the drive to pick up the latest CD or DVD I just had to have. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think it's great that Polk County finally made it to the silver screen, but come one people, let's get it right. This totally runied the movie for me. I'm a history major. I want things done right. This movie was mediocre at best. What could have been a great movie was turned bad by a large helping of melancholy mixed with sentimentality. Just once, I'd like to see the protaganist get to the airport and find the lover had indeed flown the coop. This movie could have been a Sosa-homerun over the bleachers and through a window on Waveland. Instead, it was just a lazy Raphael Furcal pop-up to the second-baseman.