A Sports Romance Where the Sports is Better than the Romance

Rating: 2/10 (8 November 2005)

I'm a fan of sports romances as a genre, especially for date movies, but in "For Love of the Game," the baseball is better than the romance as the relationship just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, though it is hard for a perfect game attempt to be made visual.
I did enjoy how oblivious the women in the movie were to ESPN, because if I didn't live with baseball fanatics I'm not sure I'd notice details of the season. I'm not sure all the other parts of the females' lives made sense (I'm the kind who worries about who's with the kid when the mother is off on a romantic weekend).
Kevin Costner still doesn't understand that if he's going to insist on marketing himself as a close-up, big screen sex symbol then he has to put as much time into working out on his body as women movie stars have to, cruel as the camera is, though the list of credits was full of "Mr. Costner's trainer", "Mr. Costner's hairstylist", "Mr. Costner's coach", etc. I still like his so-American dialog delivery, but it's his too-long, pensive, tortured close-ups that don't work as well, except towards the end where manliness has to deal with emotion and he was quite effective there.
(originally written 9/26/1999)