Sort of a B movie, but fun

Rating: Null/10 (29 August 2004)

The cast is all-star; the story is promising; the lighting is weird; the directing is cliché, but the screenplay is the fun. It feels computer-generated, so amateurish are some dialogs, so formulaic are the situations (it feels as if a Disney family oriented movie sometimes invades a serious drama), so stereotypical are the characters. (SPOILERS) At one point, our hero has a bullet removed from his stomach after being shot 15 years before (!), and the doctor warns him about the danger he's in because of the damage it did to his guts. Redford argues it is not important because that shot is something of the past (!!). At another point, he goes on a bad hitting streak for weeks because he is dating a girl who wants to sabotage him. She does nothing, he just catches her bad luck! But he starts hitting well again for several weeks when he is at bat and vaguely sees a person in white (the mother of his son) standing up and reflecting the sun. The last 40 minutes of film are just composed of "generic" scenes that could be in any movie: hero rejects bribery, gets to final game just before it starts, talks to a teammate who is on the fix, has a bad game but rises up to the occasion in the end hitting a home-run in slow motion (how could it be otherwise?). There isn't a single shot that you can't see it coming from miles. But I found nothing irritating in this movie, because 10 minutes after it begins you already can't take it seriously. I actually found its silliness very charming. Brimley, Redford and Duvall are very charismatic. Good mindless fun.