BEFORE: From golf I move back to baseball, a sport I've watched and understood better. Umm, I think. I've covered baseball as a topic before, by watching everything from "Mr. 3000" to "Fever Pitch", "The Fan", "The Natural", "The Babe" and "The Rookie". In letting the chain find its own rhythm, it's a topic I've come back to on an almost annual basis. But I think this will be the last time, I mean, really, what's left at this point?
I can imagine what you're wondering - why didn't I place this film after "The Fighter", since they share an actress in common? Excellent question - the simple answer is that I didn't notice, but even if I had, that would have meant mixing up the boxing and baseball films, jumping back and forth between sports, or moving "The Fighter" off of its position as Movie #1,500. My chain has to satisfy me on a thematically-organized level, and not just through the linking of actors. Anyway, since I was discussing "Major League" yesterday, it's fine to point out that Rene Russo from "Tin Cup" was also in that great baseball film with Chelcie Ross (the older pitcher who talked about putting Vagisil, Bardol and even snot on the ball), who appears tonight.
THE PLOT: An ailing baseball scout in his twilight years takes his daughter along for one last recruiting trip.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Moneyball" (Movie #1,152)
AFTER: Well, I already had sports films mixed with war films, sports films mixed with love stories, and sports films mixed with family drama. This one appears to also be in the latter camp, focusing on Gus and Mickey, a father and daughter coming to terms with each other, and they're both screwed up in different ways. He's getting older and his vision is starting to go, which of course directly affects his job as a baseball scout, and she's in therapy, trying to come to terms with the way her father abandoned her for years while she was a teenager, letting other relatives raise her. At first it seems like this was because of all the traveling he had to do to find prospects, but it turns out there was a deeper, darker reason.
The third point in the film's character triangle is a younger baseball scout for another team, who coincidentally was scouted by Gus back when he was a player, and he's coincidentally working the same circuit at the same time, and roughly the same age as Mickey, and coincidentally also attracted to her and astounded by her baseball knowledge, so it looks like we've got something cooking here, but like some of the other sports films this week, it requires the viewer to ignore one unlikely coincidence after another.
Besides, Mickey is a lawyer, and, no, wait, she coincidentally hates her job and has a career crisis JUST as the opportunity comes up to go out on the road with her father and look after him. I get that when one door closes, a window opens and all that, but come on. Again it feels like a screenwriter was looking for some shortcuts in order to make all the pieces fit together in a particular pleasing way. Sometimes people get frustrated with their job and quit and it takes months or years for them to find another opportunity that interests them, that's all I'm sayin'. But not in movies!
This film also treads in the same territory that "Moneyball" did, only from the other angle. "Moneyball" was all about the change-over from baseball scouts who had a nose for talent, but could not always quantify the benefits of one player over another to a system that relied more on statistics and computer projections. This film can almost be seen as an answer film, since it makes the point that the methods used by older scouts are just as viable, and in some cases better predictors of player performance. Plus, in some ways are better, because they address the human element that can't be addressed by a computer - Gus brings a young player's parents to a game, with the hope that he'll perform better, for example.
The problem is, we've now got one film that says that computers and statistics work better, and another that says that aging, nearly blind scouts work better. So, which is it? Can't we all get on the same page here? I'm all for people being productive in their golden years, but I also think there's a time when a man's got to acknowledge his limitations and pack it in. Besides, if MLB in general is leaning toward computers over codgers, who am I to suggest they're not doing it right?
Also starring Clint Eastwood (last seen in "Play Misty For Me"), Amy Adams (last seen in "The Fighter"), Justin Timberlake (last seen in "In Time"), John Goodman (last seen in "Red State"), Matthew Lillard (last seen in "The Descendants"), Robert Patrick (last seen in "Safe House"), George Wyner, Bob Gunton (last seen in "Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls").
RATING: 5 out of 10 bags of peanuts
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