It's tough to follow home run with a double. And that's what Trouble with the Curve is. A double.

Rating: 6/10 (7 June 2013)

I was irritated with Clint after his ridiculous performance at Mitt's ridiculous convention, and I was worried that my feelings would affect my experience of seeing him in Trouble with the Curve. But I should have had more faith in my own ability to put such feelings aside because when the lights went down and he showed up to play a failing baseball scout who has spent a lifetime following the game, I forgot all about empty chairs and silly monologues.
Clint is so bad in this movie that his embarrassing convention performance a few weeks ago has now been completely overshadowed by his stilted, half-assed performance in this movie. There is a scene early on in which he has just gotten out of bed and is going to try to pee. His plumbing is working like an old man's—nothing is happening. He talks to it, and while I'm sure that scene actually plays itself out in real life across the world in many languages, Clint has no clue how it works. Then there is his failing eyesight, which causes him to run into things and trip and fall into grandstands. It's played so badly, so inauthentically, that you can almost hear the director saying to him, "trip here Clint."
And what a shame it is, because the character of Gus Lobel has legs, and it needed the kind of performance that Tommy Lee Jones gave in Hope Springs. The character of Gus reveals a lot about the inner workings of men in their twilight years who have wrestled with hard decisions alone, without input from the people who were affected by those decisions. My dad is a Gus Lobel, and when I thought about the character after the movie, I softened my attitude toward some of the decisions my father made that affected me so very much long ago, decisions that seemed at the time to have been made without any consideration for my opinion. It was a gift, but I didn't get it from Clint's performance.
Then there is Amy Adams, whom we all love. You are not allowed not to love Amy, who plays Gus' brilliant daughter Mickey (Mickey, by the way, is just too contrived a name. Quit using her name to shove who she really is down my throat). Mickey is struggling to play the role of a trident lawyer, but her true joy is the game of baseball. I love how she demonstrates her knowledge of the game at the moment most likely to give it a large landing. I don't mean to sound petty, but the trouble with Amy in this film is her hair. I can't see past it. It's really long and very wavy, and takes over the screen whenever it is on camera, which obviously is whenever Amy is on camera. My Aunt Nancy said when we were leaving the theater that all she could see was Veronica Lake. Here is a quote from Veronica Lake that says it all. "I will have one of the cleanest obits of any actress. I never did cheesecake like Ann Sheridan or Betty Grable. I just used my hair." And so it goes. Her performance was lost in her hair. Alas.
Justin Timberlake, who plays Gus' adoring discovery and the smitten wannabe boyfriend of Mickey, really needs to stop trying to take up more creative space than he is due. He is a great singer, and an even better performer on stage. He needs to quit being greedy and stop trying to be an actor as well. You only get so many talents. 'Nuff said.
A shout out to John Goodman, who is always great playing the same cranky man's man who has real soul underneath. I'd love to have lunch with him sometime. Bet he's got tons to say.
The movie is better than my whining here. There is a message in it, and the ending has the rah rah we Americans love to see on the screen, but it isn't developed enough. It's one-dimensional and too predictable, and the truth is that even if it had been done better, the real problem is that it follows the movie Moneyball, which was so damned fabulous that any baseball movie would pale in comparison. It's tough to follow home run with a double. And that's what Trouble with the Curve is. A double.