I really wanted to like this film.

Rating: 5/10 (2 August 2001)

I tried, I tried hard. However, after flashback number 97, I started to get a little irritated. This is a film that is supposed to pull on those heart strings and it tries to pull on them in every scene. Watching this film, I could not help but be reminded of "Jerry MacGuire." The film just wants to be so sentimental, so often. It just gets tiring. The story revolves around a 40 year old pitcher, who might be pitching his very last game. He is played well by Kevin Costner. Costner's character is your classic throw-back ballplayer, he lives and breathes baseball. He is also very loyal to his Detroit Tigers. However, as his career winds down, he starts to see that there are other things in life that are important. Moreover, he starts to see that he is going to have to start making some huge decisions, soon. The problem is, we can see the decisions he has to make pretty quickly, Costner's character cannot seem to grasp the obvious around him. The flashback scenes of his developing romance just start to become tedious. Moreover, practically all of the characters in the movie are undeveloped. You really don't know anything about Costner's relationships with other people and players. However, the movie pretends that we all know the history. I hate to say it, but the movie starts to get real sappy. It is just too simplistic. The same old points that have already been made, baseball is great, we should all love baseball, why don't you love baseball? I think the film should have concentrated on the baseball angle or the love angle. However, it trys to do both and we are left with a somewhat uninspired, paint by the numbers, novel to movie. ** out of ****.