Million Dollar Movie?

Rating: 8/10 (2 March 2017)

Baseball and cricket, two vastly different sports from totally different countries. The two sports are integrated into one movie in Craig Gillespie's Million Dollar Arm. In the movie Million Dollar Arm, J.B. Bernstein must find a client to sign or his career as a sports agent will be over. J.B. invests all his time and effort into finding a cricket star who he hopes to turn into a major league baseball player. To find his golden goose, he holds a contest called the Million Dollar Arm in order to find someone who can throw a ball both accurately and quickly enough to compete in the major league. J.B. eventually stumbles upon two potential clients, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel who prove to be promising clients. The two Indian boys must overcome the overwhelming American culture, while J.B. must mother and coach the two eighteen year old boys. Although Million Dollar Arm may seem like any other cliché sports movie with an underdog, the film is much more than the stereotypes and is about culture, compassion, and risk.
J.B. Bernstein is a total wreck in the beginning of the movie. His life is a mess because he will lose his job if he does not find a client soon. He remembers what a friend was mentioning to him earlier in the week about cricket being extremely popular, so he watches cricket late at night and he has a brilliant idea to turn a cricket player into a baseball pitcher. To find the cricket player, he must travel to India, where cricket is extremely popular. J.B. Bernstein is overwhelmed by the vast culture of India and shares his unique experience with his neighbor, Brenda Fenwick, through video chat. India's culture is obviously quite different from America's, but J.B. Bernstein is too focused on finding his new client that he is blind to the fact. The boys are sent to stay at J.B.'s house since they had no where else to go. J.B. is furious at first, but his neighbor helps him to understand that the boys are just kids and are a far way from home and are homesick in a brand new environment. J.B. is confused by a scent coming from the boys' room. They are praying with their heads bowed and had burned incense and J.B. does not know what to think of what the boys are doing.
Compassion is a key trait that J.B. must quickly adopt because he needs to look after two foreign children without any experience. After he discovers Rinku and Dinesh, he brings them back to America where the kids are overwhelmed by the huge transition into the United States. Dinesh and Rinku are even amused by something we, Americans, often overlook, an elevator. The kids are so amused that they play with the elevator several times and stick their arm between the doors as they are about to close so that the doors open. They find the doors opening to be magic and have never seen anything like it before. The hotel that they were staying in, with the elevator, later notified J.B. about a situation at the hotel. The boys cause a huge inconvenience to hotel staff and other guests by setting off an alarm. J.B. leaves them alone and they all go to a party later at night. J.B. is too caught up in his own job and maintaining his reputation that he loses sight of Rinku and Dinesh. They had wondered off at the party's and had eaten and drank a little too much. J.B. does not realize that the boys are feeling sick until someone tells him about a problem that the boys are causing. J.B. has to take them home, but on the ride home, the boys throw up in the car leaving J.B.'s new van covered in vomit. J.B. and the boys soon grow close with each other with the help from a translator named Amit. J.B. grows so close, that he even shares details about his complicated relationship with his neighbor, Brenda Fenwick.
J.B. takes a huge risk by going to India and bringing two boys overseas and training them to become MLB pitchers. He also risks his reputation as a sports agent and could make a potential fool of himself if this fails. At the boys' first MLB tryout, he looks crazy because the tryout is in the middle of a parking lot of a shopping mall and the boys pitch the ball very inaccurately. The boys are depressed at how poorly they performed, but J.B. takes another risk by assuring them that they will have another chance, but a lot of people begin to decline because they heard about the disaster in the shopping mall. However, he fortunately finds a tryout with other MLB scouts and they eventually are drafted to a team. Nevertheless, all J.B.'s mission was based on risk and found success with the slimmest of chances.
Million Dollar Arm was much more than an ordinary sports movie. It is about compassion, culture, and risk and also combines the qualities of a regular sports movie with hints of Disney throughout the movie.