The Mighty Ducks

Year 5, Day 226 - 8/14/13 - Movie #1,509

BEFORE: Let's keep the hockey theme rolling - er, skating.  Linking from "Miracle", again I rely on the film "The Safety of Objects", which starred both Patricia Clarkson and Joshua Jackson (last heard in "Racing Stripes") from tonight's film.

THE PLOT:  A self-centered lawyer is sentenced to community service coaching a rag tag youth hockey team.

AFTER:  Did I really need to watch this one?  Isn't it the exact same film as "Hardball", only with a different sport?  Callous adult, forced to coach a little league/peewee team, but this enables him to eventually find himself as a caring person, enter a relationship and realize the value of fair play, and that it's not all about winning (even though the team does exactly that).

Oh, there are subtle differences - "Hardball" was set in Chicago, this one's in Minnesota.  "Hardball" had inner-city black kids, this one has mostly white suburban kids.  The coach in "Hardball" was a gambler, this one centers on a lawyer.  But that's all just window-dressing, right?  Both films feature a company sponsoring the team, which of course is full of unlikely athletes except for one with real talent, unusual training methods, and an improbable shot at the championship.  To say these are both by-the-numbers is really an understatement.

Side by side, "Mighty Ducks" shows a bit more restraint.  "Hardball" really oversold it by making the kids a little TOO poor and cute, the coach a little TOO desperate, and the relationship a little TOO improbable.   Plus the flagrant rules violations were a bit much - hockey's a harder sport to cheat at, I think.  Everything from distracting the goalie to running fake plays to faking injuries, it all seems like fair game.

(Again, I maintain that I know nearly nothing about hockey rules.  I start hearing about blue lines and the neutral zone and clearing the puck, and my mind just goes blank.  I know more about the Neutral Zone in "Star Trek" than I do about the one on the hockey rink...)

I still had troubles watching kids act, or perhaps fail to.  The line readings here are broad and oversized, the kind of thing you expect to see on the Disney Channel (this IS a Disney movie, after all) and I just can't take that style of acting seriously.  I wish the kids could have been a bit more natural - couldn't they just watch the adult leads act deadpan, and do what they did?

Also starring Emilio Estevez (last seen in "The Breakfast Club"), Lane Smith (last seen in "The Legend of Bagger Vance"), M.C. Gainey, Heidi King, Josef Sommer, Joss Ackland (last seen in "Miracle on 34th Street"), Eldon Henson.

RATING: 4 out of 10 broken eggs

Miracle

Year 5, Day 225 - 8/13/13 - Movie #1,508

BEFORE: I'm going to close the Sports Report with hockey, 4 films' worth (5 if you count last night's film, which had a bit of hockey in it).  Hockey is the only major league sport I haven't covered, part of that is because I understand hockey even less than I understand golf.  When it comes to sports, I often defer to the wisdom of the late great George Carlin, who declared that there are really only three main sports - baseball, football and basketball - and that hockey doesn't count because it's not played with a ball.  Everything besides the big 3 is an activity.

He also said that in essence, hockey is three activities in one - skating, hitting a puck with a stick, and people beating the crap out of each other.  Is it a coincidence that in the last week my films have covered figure skating, golf (hitting something with a stick) and boxing?  Somehow my subconscious must have remembered Carlin's rules and assembled movies on those three topics in a row, culminating in a hockey chain.  So, welcome to Team Golf (plus Boxing) on Ice.

Linking from "The Cutting Edge", Moira Kelly was also in "The Safety of Objects" with Patricia Clarkson (last seen in "The Dead Pool").

THE PLOT: The true story of Herb Brooks, the player-turned-coach who led the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team to victory over the seemingly invincible Russian squad.

AFTER: This film is set during the Winter Olympics of 1980, and if you can remember the Games of 1980 like I can, well that means you'll feel really old when I point out that was 33 years ago.  I was 11 at the time, so that makes me...well, let's just say 39+, OK?  But in a way that was a different time - the Russians had invaded Afghanistan, and because the U.S. was thinking about boycotting the Summer Games in the U.S.S.R, the Soviet countries were threatening to not come to Lake Placid.  Today, the U.S. has occupied Afghanistan, and because of human rights policies, some people in the U.S. want to boycott next year's Olympics in Sochi, Russia.  See?  Totally different.

Before getting around to hockey, this film details the events of the 1970's, like the Iran hostage crisis, the energy crisis, inflation, and even Watergate, as if to suggest that the nation was broken, and needed some unifying force to rally back.  Later in the film President Carter's famous speech is played, the one where he said that "the erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and political fabric of America".  The suggestion here is that Olympic hockey saved the nation, and I'm not sure I'm willing to go that far. 

Sure, we all tuned in to watch Olympic hockey, and sure, the games were exciting, but let's keep some perspective here.  After all, there continued to be political scandals and mistrust in our elected officials in the decades that followed.  A sports victory can only do so much, it can't fix a broken socio-economic system, OK?

Putting that aside, the film does a pretty good job of reminding us how thrilling it was when the scrappy young U.S. team beat the more experienced, genetically superior Soviet team that had been functioning as a unit for a much longer period of time.  In addition there's great detail about the extensive training the team underwent to face their opponents.  And there's a great connection made between WHAT the coach makes them do, and WHY he makes them do it.  The only downside comes with the extensive shots of the coach staring at pieces of paper, or making diagrams on a glass board.  There's just no way for the details of the training to come through, at least not to me.

The adversities that needed to be overcome in order to win medals included both the physical (battling injuries during games and exhaustion during training) and the emotional (rivals from different colleges forced to work together).  So this fits in perfectly with my new theory about proper sports films.

My rating is for the sports aspect, minus the overblown political implications.  I suppose I should deduct points for not depicting the gold medal round against Finland, but then again, we all know that was sort of an afterthought to the game against the U.S.S.R. anyway.

Also starring Kurt Russell (last seen in "3000 Miles to Graceland"), Eddie Cahill, Noah Emmerich (last seen in "Super 8"), Patrick O'Brien Demsey, Michael Mantenuto, Nathan West, Kenneth Mitchell, Eric Peter-Kaiser, and the voice of Al Michaels.

RATING: 6 out of 10 bodychecks

The Cutting Edge

Year 5, Day 224 - 8/12/13 - Movie #1,507

BEFORE:  I know, it seems a little strange to be watching a film about a winter sport like figure skating here in the middle of summer.  But a sports film is a sports film - they all share the same DNA, right?  Besides, the Winter Olympics is just 7 months away, so I'm really ahead of the curve - and said Winter Olympics were in the news last week due to rumblings of a possible boycott over Russia's anti-gay policies.  Which I think could be really bad news for some male figure skaters.

Anyway, D.B. Sweeney carries over from "Hardball", so that re-affirms my choice to transition this way.

THE PLOT:  A tempermental but talented figure skater's coach recruits a hockey player to partner with her through the difficult training for Nationals and the Olympics.

AFTER:  As often happens here at the Movie Year, an unintended secondary theme has surfaced.  This chain was put together merely to reference different sports and find the commonalities among them, and the common thread this week turned out to be desperation.  I can trace it all the way back to "Here Comes the Boom", where a teacher desperately needed to raise money to fund a school music program, through the boxing films, golfers who were desperate to regain their perfect swings, a baseball scout desperate to keep his job despite his age, and a man so desperate to escape his gambling debts he'd become a baseball coach.  Oh, yeah, and the knuckleball was portrayed as the go-to pitch for guys desperate to salvage their baseball careers.

Tonight we've got a hockey player who gets injured, and is desparate to get back in the game - and when he fails, he transitions to figure-skating, still desparate to get a medal of some kind.  And the figure skater is equally desparate for a medal, and having been through countless partners, she is forced to partner with a man she does not respect in order to be part of a prominent skating pair and have a shot at the gold.

What is it about desperation that fuels these athletes?  Or is that just a shortcut to portray an underdog to the audience, since we all want to see the little guy win, or at least be competitive.  We identify with the underdog, the unlikely or incompetent hero who just needs a little bit of an edge to have a shot at winning, because we like to think of ourselves in the same position, even though we're probably completely out of shape, and the closest we'll come to the Olympics is watching them on TV.

You just wouldn't want to watch a movie about a superior athlete who hit the genetic jackpot and doesn't have to train very hard, or a team that buys up so many superstars that winning the championship is practically an afterthought - where's the drama in that?  So every sports movie has to be an underdog story in some way, or show the central figure overcoming some kind of physical, mental or cultural adversity.  "We Are Marshall", "Rudy", "Chariots of Fire", "Cool Runnings", "The Scout", "Days of Thunder", "Bad News Bears", "Kingpin", "The Hurricane", "Million Dollar Baby" - I can go on and on...

I'm sure there must be some exceptions, but I kind of feel like I've cracked the code.  Overcoming adversity or physical limitations goes hand-in-hand with winning, according to the language of film.
(A film that showed someone who was merely good at their sport, and won by just plain being "better" would probably feel like half of a film...) And "The Cutting Edge" is a prime example.  If these seemingly mismatched atheletes can't find a way to work together, then they can't succeed.  And it's only when their personal lives get straightened out, and they finally admit the attraction between them, that they are able to perform at their personal best on the ice.

Which, in addition to feeling a little contrived, also seems like something of an over-simplification.  I think it's safe to assume that there are plenty of athletes playing professional sports who also have fairly screwed-up personal lives.  How many people have to take the field each weekend (any sport, pick one...) who are having marital troubles, or are cheating on their spouses, or are just plain sleeping around?  As seen at the start of this film, the Olympics is a chance for people from all different countries to compete, and have casual sex with each other afterwards.  And if I needed to list every pro player with complicated relationships, well, I don't have that kind of room.

But let's take one prominent example, Tiger Woods.  His adulterous affairs came to light in 2009, and once his wife finished beating his car with a golf club, he took a break from golf, and people are still waiting for him to return to form.  So perhaps there is some connection between a happy personal life and a successful sporting career.  But what if he was playing at the top of his game WHILE he was having all those affairs - what does that signify?

NITPICK POINT: If Kate was such a great skater, then why did she need a partner at all?  Why wasn't she competing as a female solo skater?  I guess they kind of addressed this point late in the film, but still...

NITPICK POINT #2: If Doug had a medical injury that prevented him from playing hockey, specifically his vision, why didn't this injury also affect his performance as a figure skater?  Surely having a blind spot while skating was a potential problem in the new sport, too, right?

Also starring Moira Kelly (last seen in "Billy Bathgate"), Roy Dotrice (last seen in "The Scarlet Letter"), Terry O'Quinn (last seen in "The Rocketeer"), Dwier Brown, Chris Benson.

RATING: 5 out of 10 tequila shots

Hardball

Year 5, Day 223 - 8/11/13 - Movie #1,506

BEFORE:  Wrapping up the baseball films with a look at Little League ball.  I can't really link properly out of "Knuckleball!" either, so I may have to suspend my rules to accommodate documentaries.  But Derek Jeter was also in "Anger Management" with Woody Harrelson, who was also in "A Scanner Darkly" with Keanu Reeves (last seen in "Johnny Mnemonic").  So that's something.

THE PLOT:  An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from a housing project as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Bad News Bears" (Movie #94)

AFTER: At first this seems like a modernized version of "The Bad News Bears", only set in the projects for more relevance, and with the lead coach character made younger for more appeal.  And in a sense that's what it is, since it doesn't seem to aspire to be any more than that.  The plot also reminded me of "Here Comes the Boom", with the main character trying to go further out of his way to help everyone in a cascading chain.  He needs more players on the team, so he has to promise their parents he'll help them with schoolwork, so he needs to get permission from the teacher, and she needs something else, and so on.

And in the process he learns to put others first, and not be always thinking about himself, and thus he redeems himself from being the self-centered gambling addict we see at the beginning of the film.  (How DARE those Chicago Bulls not cover the spread!  It's like they didn't consider my needs at all!) And I'm fine with that as character development, really.

But in the process, it delivers an odd message - it's OK to bet your way out of owing money to a bookie?  Just place bigger and bigger bets, and when one of them pays off, you can cover all the other bad bets!  Meanwhile, since he had a way of earning money by coaching the team, it would have been a stronger message if he'd paid down his debt week by week.  Also, he didn't feel the need to teach the kids the mechanics of the game, or at least we didn't see it, so it seemed like he was only interested in dropping off the equipment and letting them figure it out.  Or, even easier, just taking them to a major-league game, and letting them just pick up the fundamentals from watching.

Also, somehow it's OK to lie about a kid's age if you're short one player?  Again, that's a strange message to be sending out to the kids, that it's OK to break the rules if you need to.  I agree that the other coach seemed to have it in for our hero's team, but that doesn't make it OK.  And why the sudden turn-around made by the other coach?  Why did he suddenly decide to look the other way, rather than take a forced forfeit?

Furthermore, the film takes some liberties with the editing of the final few games in the season.  It's an odd choice to show the a decisive game-changing moment only in flashback, and then to not show any footage from the final game at all - almost saying that the final game doesn't even matter, when in fact it should be the most significant game of all.

NITPICK POINT: The film is set in Chicago, but the coach takes the kids to Tiger Stadium.  In Detroit, which is taking kids across state lines without parental consent.  That would seem to constitute a felony.  I look forward to the sequel where this guy was sued by the parents and has to coach a baseball team while in prison.

Also starring Diane Lane (last seen in "Man of Steel"), John Hawkes (last seen in "Congo"), Michael B. Jordan (last seen in "Chronicle"), D.B. Sweeney (last seen in "Memphis Belle"), Michael McGlone (last seen in "The Bone Collector"), Mark Margolis (last seen in "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective"), with a cameo from Sammy Sosa. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 slices of pizza

Knuckleball!

Year 5, Day 222 - 8/10/13 - Movie #1,505

BEFORE: Something a little different tonight - I've got a few documentaries on my watchlist, and it's high time that I started working them in.  A doc on baseball makes a perfect fit here in the sports section, even if there are no actors for me to properly link to.  I know a lot of baseball movies usually have cameos from major leaguers, so I guess I thought that "Trouble With the Curve" might show some real baseball players who might also pop up in this documentary, but no such luck.  I could point out that Justin Timberlake was in a film called "Longshot" with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who was in "The Other Guys" with Derek Jeter, who appears tonight, but it feels like a bit of a stretch.

THE PLOT:  A documentary that showcases baseball's most unpredictable pitch.

AFTER: It does seem a little odd to make a film that just focuses on one pitch, but someone saw an opportunity with one knuckleball pitcher going for his 200th game and another rising to prominence in the major leagues during the 2011 season.  They got incredibly lucky because that turned out to be the final season for Tim Wakefield of the Red Sox, and in his farewell speech, he ended up mentioning the other player, R.A. Dickey of the New York Mets.  (Since these are my two favorite MLB teams, I should really appreciate this film...)

It turns out that the knuckleballers consider themselves a tight-knit fraternity within baseball.  They're the ones that throw the sport's most difficult, most misunderstood and perhaps hardest-to-hit pitch.  They "push" the ball with their fingertips (not knuckles, so it's really a misnomer) upon release, which somehow removes all the spin from the ball - all of the other pitches use spin to put the ball in the proper place.  Think about how easy it is to shoot a cue ball on a pool table, and then think about how difficult it would be to add just enough backspin so that the ball slid along the table without turning.  See?

Incredibly, Wakefield was with the Red Sox for 17 seasons, which is rare for ANY player these days, let alone a knuckleball pitcher.  His records include most innings pitched by a Red Sox pitcher (beating out turncoat Roger Clemens) and 2nd in all-time wins at Fenway Park.  But during those 17 seasons he'd been a starter, a middle reliever, a closer, and in some stretches not used at all.  Part of that may be due to the vagaries of the knuckleball, since some managers don't like turning their game over to a pitcher so unpredictable even he doesn't know where the ball's going to end up.

That's right, the pitcher doesn't know, the catcher doesn't know, and (most importantly) neither does the batter.  As I understand it the batter might sometimes be able to predict a pitcher's routine, but if he's a knuckleballer, all bets are off.  Which, as you might imagine, can lead to more wild pitches, more passed balls, more walks, etc.  But if a pitcher can maintain some semblance of control, can also lead to more strikeouts and even one-hitters or no-hitters.

It seems like Wakefield had the good sense to peak during the ALCS games in 2003 and 2004, which of course were against the damn Yankees.  One of those ended up going the Red Sox's way and the other didn't.  But in 2003 he allowed just three runs over 13 innings of the ALCS, then gave up the winning home run - that's the vagaries of the knuckleball, I guess.  In the 2004 ALCS, when the Sox came back from 0-3, he shined in Game 5 and threw three shutout innings of a 14-inning game.  That was the year when the World Series was sort of an afterthought, and the real battle was fought in the ALCS.  I've got those games on DVD, and this made me want to watch them again. 

R.A. Dickey, on the other hand, portrays the nature of the knuckleball as a desperation pitch, used by pitchers who are not fastball pitchers, since a knuckleball can be thrown at only 60-70 mph, as opposed to a 95-100 mph fastball.  Dickey was drafted by the Rangers in 1996, and spent 14 years bouncing around the majors and minors before signing with the Mets.  He transitioned to a knuckleball pitchers sometime around 2006, as an attempt to prolong his career, Wakefield-style (or perhaps Niekro-style).  After an impressive 2011 season with the Mets (the one covered by this film) he had an even better 2012, winning the Cy Young award - the first knuckleball pitcher to do so. 

Which, as any defeatist Met fan knows, means he was living on borrowed time, and naturally he was traded to the Blue Jays for the 2013 season.  Seems about right.

I sort of wish the film had been a little more chronological - bouncing around in time turns out to be just as annoying to me in a documentary as it is in a narrative film.  Having the ability to show clips from past baseball seasons, to me, does not justify putting them in any order you want to make your point.  And with the 2011 season Dickey had, why not end on the high note?  

RATING: 5 out of 10 saved games

Trouble With the Curve

Year 5, Day 221 - 8/9/13 - Movie #1,504

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

Tin Cup

Year 5, Day 220 - 8/8/13 - Movie #1,503

BEFORE: Again, I'm playing with a handicap tonight, which is a distinct lack of golf knowledge.  Most of what I do know probably comes from "Caddyshack", anyway.  Well, at least I don't let it slow me down.  In another act of what I'm calling diving providence, today is the first day of the PGA Championship, and I did not know that in advance.  I realize the film depicts the U.S. Open, which is a different tournament, but still, I'll take it.  (I suppose it's not really that much of a confluence, since the golf season runs what, 9 months out of the year and there's always one tournament or another starting every Thursday...)

Linking from "The Legend of Bagger Vance", Bruce McGill was also in "A Perfect World" with Kevin Costner (last seen in "Man of Steel").

THE PLOT: A washed up golf pro working at a driving range tries to qualify for the US Open in order to win the heart of his succesful rival's girlfriend.

AFTER: It's unfortunate that Hollywood can't seem to make a sports movie that doesn't rely on cliché and coincidence.  Even the ones I like the best, like, say "Major League", fall back on some very overused stereotypes - the young, wild pitcher, the grizzled veteran, the even more grizzled coach, and the bitchy team owner.  And what are the chances that the team that the Indians have the most trouble playing against, the Yankees, will turn out to be the ones they need to beat to win the pennant?  Oh, probably about 100 percent.

For the most part, this film relies on many of the same broad strokes in its portrayal of a washed-up former golf pro, and the love triangle he gets into with a beautiful therapist, who's dating his former (and future) golf rival.  Now, what do you suppose the odds are they'll be the last two players contending in the last tournament in the film, and the game will come down to the last hole?

It seems like a real timesaver - why watch every sports film when you can just watch one?  What were the odds that Rocky Balboa would have to face the boxer who killed his best friend?  Even if that's not the way sports works, that's how movies tend to work.  What about the rivalries "The Karate Kid", "Run Fatboy Run", or countless others?  Most sports don't have clear heroes and villains, but movies need to.

Ah, but sometimes, in the middle of all those stereotypes and forced rivalries, there are sometimes moments that rise above.  Like Tom Berenger's character "calling his shot" near the end of "Major League" - or Daniel-San doing that crane-kick, if you can ignore that he totally telegraphed that move, and the villain decided to attack him face-first and walk right into it.

In a way, that's what we get at the end of "Tin Cup" - an 18th hole so unbelievable that you (and the golf-watching nation) can't believe what they're seeing.  It may not come from a great and pure place, if anything it comes from the lead character's stubbornness and self-destructive tendencies, but it's an occurence that transcends the situation and would gain everyone's attention, if it were to really happen.  If it were a NASCAR race, it would be like someone's car crossing the finish line while upside-down and on fire.  Win or lose, it would make the highlight reel.

Does that make the whole film great?  Unfortunately, no.  There's no reason the film had to be over two hours long, and most of the characters are very underdeveloped.  Why does Mr. Tin Cup need an entourage of 8 hangers-on, when most of them don't even have dialogue?  The movie would have worked just as well with 4 non-distinct losers who have nothing to say. 

Plus, I'm unclear on the specifics regarding why the love interest chooses one golfer over the other - they're pretty evenly matched in ability, there's just a slight difference in attitude.  OK, so one is a little more arrogant than the other - he's a pro athlete, doesn't that sort of come with the job?  I get that she eventually realizes she's more attracted to one than the other, but WHY? 

Also starring Rene Russo (last seen in "Outbreak"), Don Johnson (last seen in "Guilty As Sin"), Cheech Marin (last heard in "Hoodwinked Too!"), Rex Linn (last seen in "The Long Kiss Goodnight"), Lou Myers (last seen in "It's Kind of a Funny Story"), Dennis Burkley, Mickey Jones, with cameos from Phil Mickelson, Jim Nantz, Fred Couples, and a bunch of other golfers and commentators I didn't recognize.

RATING: 6 out of 10 water hazards