A travesty (also, it's pretty silly)

Rating: 3/10 (1 November 2000)

Not only is this film schmaltzy, with one-dimensional characters, it perverts a classic American novel. Malamud's book is dark, intelligent, and enthralling. This movie takes the essential plot of the book and strips away any meaning from the story and any depth from the characters.
While in theory there isn't anything wrong is changing aspects of a novel in adaptation, in this case the changes show how they bastardized what was once a work of art and made instead a mediocre movie. In the film, Hobbs is seen making his "magical" bat with his father in a loving, touching father-son moment. In the book, Hobbs' father was an abusive drunk. The character of The Judge is more than just a Snidely Wiplash villain in the book, we actually understand why he's doing what he's doing. And most important of all, Hobbs relationships with the two women (in the film played by Kim Basinger and Glenn Close) is far more complex. The film leaves nothing to the audience's credit, making it clear at the end which woman Hobbs should go for. In Redford and Levinson's watered-down world the heroes are perfect, the villains and completely evil and the outcome is pre-ordained. This is not a thinking man's movie.
They should have at least had the common decency and respect to give this movie a different title so someone could later make a true adaptation of Malamud's brilliant novel.