Redford's bimbo, gorgeous but dumb

Rating: Null/10 (30 May 2003)

This movie is about a mystical black man named Bagger Vance who shows up one day to teach Matt Damon (wounded slightly in WWI) how to be good at golf again. We all learn a valuable lesson about golf as a metaphor for life. The End.
Really the only good thing I have to say about this movie is that it is beautifully shot. Some of the sunset shots simply must be required in any prestigious film studies class. There are a few other camera tricks Redford uses to fully showcase the splendor of the Georgia sea coast, and they make you wish you were really there.
However, everything else about this movie was garbage. I mean, it is simply a 'Field of Dreams' type mystical film set to golf instead of baseball, but whereas baseball does indeed have a legitimate legendary and mythical status in the American mind, golf is just a rich white man's game played in one's ugliest clothes. Golf will never have the stature and love that baseball does, even if more people play golf nowadays. It is a good game (I am not here merely to bash golf) but it is still a game and not a sport.

**Possible Spoilers Ahead** This movie is very implausible (if you can extract yourself from the ultra-manipulative filming style) and would be a good fantasy tale if it were not loosely based upon well-known history. This film takes place sometime in the 1920's, if I am not mistaken, a time when absolutely no black people (i.e. Vance) would have been tolerated on a golf course in Massachusetts, much less a southern state like Georgia. Of course, he doesn't actually play golf in this film, but appears to know more about it than anyone else. Maybe his wisdom came from observing people he wasn't allowed to associate with playing a game he wasn't allowed to play, through binoculars since he wasn't allowed anywhere near the place. Now, Bagger Vance was portrayed as a bit of a simpleton, but why would he go to the trouble of learning so much about a game when all he could possibly do with his knowledge is to have the honor of serving as a white man's caddy? Lofty goals, my friends, lofty goals. There are a few other cliched plot devices (the little white kid who looks up to Matt Damon, the hot-and-bothered southern belle love interest). Putting the southern belle aside (I know that big budget movies need love interests as part of some commandment of movie-making) what is with that kid? How many ten year old boys do you know who are absolutely nuts about golf and who weren't born into wealth and privilege? When I was ten, I was into baseball and hockey and football, and so was everyone I knew. Golf was something our fathers played, and they weren't even that crazy about the game.
Bad performances all around (except from Bruce McGill, who can always be counted upon to ham it up with the best): Matt Damon plays himself yet again, Charlize Theron is just here for scenery, the kid is chirpy and annoying, and Will Smith plays one of the more offensive black stereotypes in recent film history (he usually plays the wisecracking black stereotype, but here it is much more Uncle Remus offensive, I was wondering why more black people didn't slam this film but then I'd be really surpised if a single black person even saw it in the first place). Really, all Vance does is grin sheepishly and dispense little pearls of wisdom that will make Damon not only a better golfer but a better human being ("Yassuh!! No Suh!!! You mus' be da ball, massuh Damon!!!).
Sadly, Robert Redford did indeed attempt to do for golf what Field of Dreams did for baseball, and failed miserably on every count. Great scenery, though.