BEFORE: Was working all day yesterday at an animation conference, a bunch of talks and then a feature film to cap off the day. For me it was 9 am to 10 pm, so yeah, a long day and those are starting to wear at me. I followed the steps to work at New York Comic Con, which is coming up in just a couple of weeks, but I've been so busy at the theater and they booked me into so many shifts in October that now I think I may want to take a pass and just NOT work those four days at Comic-Con, just have a little stay-cation at home. Maybe I can buy a one-day pass and attend the Con for one day, spy on the old boss, but it feels weird, I haven't bought a Comic-Con ticket in about 20 years, I always get in free because I'm working for an exhibitor. Yeah, big change, do I want to drop $40 or whatever for a ticket, or just start boycotting the event. I don't think I really want to spend four full days on my feet doing crowd control, I think I'll wear my legs out. You know, I've got 20 years of Con photos to sort through and re-post, maybe that's a better use of my time.
I can just make it through September under the wire, I think - three days left after today and three films left to connect me to the horror chain. But I'm still on sports tonight, we're moving from college flag football to Little League baseball, there's a progression, right?
Taylor Hunt Wright carries over from "Balls Out".
THE PLOT: A LIttle League team of misfits dedicates their season to a player's dying father. In doing so, they accomplish the impossible by reaching the World Series finals in a game that became an ESPN instant classic.
AFTER: Fresh off the film that makes fun of all the cliches in sports movies that we've gotten used to, here's a movie where the last-place team, the one with all the misfits, comes together and starts to, you know, actually practice and get their sh*t together and somehow make it to the Little League World Series. But how? Why? It's based on a true story, that of the team from Fort Worth, TX that played in that event in 2002.
Kids are terrible actors, and really none of them can't deliver a good, believable line reading. That's unfortunate, because rather than convince me that this story is "real" it just makes me aware that all of the kids are actors, and they're also not good at it. Better actors would have said their lines with conviction and disappeared into the characters they were playing, and then I wouldn't be thinking about how unreal everything here is. The illusion needs to be maintained - Greg Kinnear and Luke Wilson and the other adults are all great, but our country has a notable dearth of kid actors who can also be believable, it seems.
Also, I need explanation about how THIS team of misfits, who had a terrible season, made it to the Little League World Series. They try to explain it in the film, but since I don't understand it, that's a fail. There had to be like a hundred other teams in their county, let alone the great state of Texas, with better baseball abilities and better stats for the season, so why the Ft. Worth team? Yes, they practiced, yes, they conditioned, yes, they rallied together as a team, but all that came LATER, that doesn't explain how they were picked in the first place. The guy from the district said he "had to send a team", was every other team unavailable? I don't get it. Now I have to go and look up the real team's back-story and do the work that the screenwriter here should have done in the first place. It's like a math team question, you don't get credit for a right answer unless you also show your work and everyone knows you got there the right way.
OK, I just did some research, and it turns out that the Little League World Series involves sixteen teams (the MLB Series, just two) and that means there are tournaments in 16 parts of the U.S. and around the world. Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, New England, Southwest, Caribbean and so on. So in those 16 regions, there are varying numbers of teams who play in a round-robin (?) format for the chance to represent their region in Williamsport, PA. The team here was re-named the Forth Worth All-Stars to represent "Texas West" in the Southwest region, the tournament was held in Waco, TX so I guess they didn't have to travel far, and while they didn't have the best record in Pool B, they had an upset over Arkansas from Pool A to advance to the finals against Texas East, which they also won. See? Was that SO HARD, Mr. Screenwriter?
So let's be clear, here, they were not "invited" to the Little League World Series, no team gets "invited", they have to win their regional tournament. But it was the district guy who sent them into that tournament, and it's still a mystery why he picked a team with a losing record to send to that, if you just present this information to me that way, it feels like they had no chance of winning. But I guess maybe any given team on any given day can win? All they need is a song or a catch-phrase or a dying father to rally around?
Once they got to the LLWS, they didn't have the best record either, because they lost to a tough team from Massachusetts, but again, another couple surprise victories plus the round-robin format kept them from being eliminated when the number of teams went from 16 to 8, and then they had to face the team from Louisville, Kentucky, who were bigger, older and more experienced. Somebody was really trying to re-make "The Bad News Bears" here and that may not have been the best plan. Well, no spoilers here but you can look up the results yourself. Still, we have to believe that it was some kind of miracle that they got as far as they did.
What was up with the soldier? Bobby Ratcliff writes a letter to his son while sitting in an airport and waiting for the delayed plane to board and take him to the World Series. But for some reason it's very important that he was looking at a soldier, like this somehow inspired the letter he was writing? Huh? I mean, we never hear the full contents of the letter, but was it about war or America or baseball or fatherly love? Yes, it's a glaring omission, and yes, it was 2002 so there was a lot of patriotism flying around after 9/11, I get that. But a filmmaker still needs to connect the dots, if the soldier is there for a reason, how about telling us all what that reason is?
The implication here, because of the choices that are given to Bobby Ratcliff from his cancer doctor, is that after his chemotherapy, he could either start surgery immediately, or fly to Pennsylvania to watch his son play in the Little League World Series. Well, he sure wasn't going to miss that game, so does that mean that he died because he attended that game? Why on earth couldn't he schedule the surgery for next week, like attend the game, fly back, get the surgery. Why wasn't that an option? Was there limited space at the hospital, was the cancer surgeon going on vacation the following week? Again, this doesn't seem to make much sense, things are either one way or the other and it's the filmmaker's job to explain why things are the way they are. Across the board, somebody really dropped the ball here.
This could have been, should have been a 6 or 7 on my scale, but really, really sloppy work prevents that. I can't reward bad storytelling and no follow-through.
Directed by Ty Roberts
Also starring Luke Wilson (last seen in "Alex & Emma"), Greg Kinnear (last seen in "I Don't Know How She Does It"), Sarah Gadon (last seen in "What If"), Molly Parker (last seen in "Pieces of a Woman"), Lew Temple (last seen in "Domino"), Joaquin Roberts, Martin Roach (last seen in "Loser"), Patrick Renna, Blake DeLong (last seen in "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"), Justin Adams, King Orba (last seen in "Roman J. Israel, Esq."), Ali Hassan (last seen in "My Spy"), Michael Cash, Etienne Kellici (last seen in "Ready or Not"), Nicholas Fry, Jacob Mazeral, Gavin MacIver-Wright, Scott MacKenzie, Zachary Morton, Josh Reich, Jacob Soley (last seen in "Flatliners" (2017)), Evan Hasler, Davide Fair, Seth Murchison, Christopher Seivright, Zachary Cox, Phoenix Ellis, Jackie English, Ashley Emerson, Peter Hoy, Daniel Krmpotic, Sandra Flores (last seen in "The Glass Castle"), Brooke Morton, Walker Connor, Jordan Sawyer, Lance Van Auken with archive footage of Satchel Paige.
RATING: 5 out of 10 rally caps
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