Baseball: Bad and Boring

Rating: 1/10 (9 December 2007)

The poster child for bad movies about baseball has just gotta be THE NATURAL, an overrated mess by Barry Levinson who directed DINER (real good) and has since directed one dud after another.
With lots of pretentious and stilted drama --- imagine Masterpiece Theater doing baseball on Saturday Night Live --- this picture might be an unintended tribute to the Chicago Cubs circa 1984 or earlier --- their wonderful Wrigley Field being a holdout against night games.
Why? Much --- I mean most of --- the picture is about Robert Redford trying to destroy the stadium lighting system by smashing it with baseballs! Not to give the whole plot away, but this he does literally dozens and dozens of times. I suppose Levinson thought all this light smashing looked like fireworks, or maybe it was intended to represent the shear glory of Mr. Redford, but the true effect for that portion of the audience neither brain dead nor ga ga over Mr. Redford is how stupid it is, how boring to watch a 2 hour movie which is mostly about smashing up light bulbs.
Somehow this awful film became a rallying point for the pseudo intellectual; hence the numerous 10, 9 and 8 ratings herein. But honestly, almost any other baseball movie is scads better.