Wow, this is a REALLY bad movie!

Instant Favorite.

A Masterpiece!

A Disappointing Continuation

For a lot of Americans baseball is life affirming. There are even people out there--and at times I confess that I am one of them--who go to high school baseball games just because watching a game where the outcome doesn't matter to you is even more relaxing than watching a game you actually care about.To some people it might be strange, but to others, hey, it's baseball and there is really no better way to spend an afternoon is there?Some Americans understand it to be an addiction. Even now, as I write this, if I look out my apartment window I can see the softball diamond that played a key role in why I chose this cramped little hovel over so many other options. In the summer, when I get off of work, I can play a game of Frogger and risk my life crossing a busy street to see a game.So when a movie about baseball comes out, no matter how good or bad it is, we feel compelled to go and see it.And there a pluses and minuses. This film came out in September. There should be a law requiring all baseball movies to come out in the winter, in those long months between the crushing defeat of the Cub's last lose and the new spring hope that this year the curse might be broken.As they say in Boston, "good luck to you and your team."But then, it was just broken wasn't it? The end is nigh and Chicago is still here. I thought for sure that it would be destroyed in a riot worse than anything soccer has ever produced.But that is another story.The fact is that there are good and bad baseball movies.Most of the good ones star Kevin Costner don't they?Bull DurhamField of DreamsFor the Love of the GameThe Sandlot (which didn't star Costner)The title really explains everything you need to know about it. It's a movie made for people that love baseball. One about a perfect game.The bottom line is that it is a movie about baseball and though it isn't as good as "Bull Durham" it is still about baseball. If you love it you love it. If you don't, well, it's still a good movie, but not as life affirming, not as wonderful, not as beautiful, not as...well, not as summer.

Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) is a worn-out 40 year old former ace pitcher for The Detroit Tigers. He's given the start of last game of a disastrous season against the Yankees in NYC. The Yankees are looking to clinch the East with a win. Tigers' owner Gary Wheeler (Brian Cox) has just sold the team and the new owners want to trade Billy to the Giants. His best friend is his catcher Gus Sinski (John C. Reilly). His girlfriend Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston) tells him that she is taking a job in London. He has the best game in awhile pitching a perfect game. The movie flashes back and forth from the present to his life courting Jane and reconnecting with his daughter Heather (Jena Malone).The movie tries so hard with every baseball cliché. It doesn't add anything original that other Costner movies and The Natural doesn't already have put out. Every pitch is striving for sentimentality. The baseball stuff builds to a pretty compelling ninth inning. That's kind of what happens in a real baseball game. The bigger problem is that the romance is as bland as it gets. The romance lacks any bite or surprises. It's the least compelling thing in the movie. At least the baseball stuff works a little even if it is cliché.

'For Love of the Game' combines two stories: One I had a genuine interest in and the other a tired wheezy old genre piece that I've seen a million times. Sad thing is, it's the latter that eventually takes over completely.The movie stars Kevin Costner (who until now had never been in a bad sports movie) as Billy Chapel, a 40 year-old pitcher who's game has seen better days. He's close to retirement and as the movie opens he has set an elegant dinner for his girlfriend who never shows. Even worse (and these things just conveniently happen on the same day) he has been traded and the team has been sold.I might have been genuinely interested in the story of an over-the-hill pitcher and his struggle to hold onto the talent that he once had and that alone is what drew me to the movie. But director Sam Raimi hammers together a tired old love story complete with all the nuts and bolts that no bad love story is ever without.There is the obligatory scene in which the two meet-cute in an unusual place (by the roadside when her car breaks down). She doesn't know who he is and knows virtually nothing about baseball (would it be too much to ask the screenwriters if the hero could fall for a sports nut?). The fall madly in love before she loses confidence in him and a huge misunderstanding leads to one of those big emotional scenes in which it looks like she will leave him forever to take a job overseas. Does she? I guarantee that you have seen this movie before and know the outcome.The movie is a surprise to me. Costner has starred in plenty of bad movies but until this movie he has never starred in a bad sports movie especially baseball after gems like 'Bull Durham' and 'Field of Dreams'. He's made his mark as box office poison in the sci-fi genre but I hope this doesn't mean that that reputation is moving over to the sports movie arena.I'm also surprised that this movie comes from Sam Raimi. In 1998 he made the hard-edged 'A Simple Plan', the story of three men who find $4,000,000 in a plane crash and struggle to keep it a secret which leads to distrust and tragedy. That movie was about human nature and never for once did we anticipate where it was going.There are two scenes in 'For Love of the Game' in which Costner is on the mound and is able to block out everything around him by 'Focusing on the mechanism'. Perhaps that logic should have been applied to the screenplay.

This movie is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too long, and that's not the worst of its problems.Perhaps the worst of its problems is that it tries to be two very different movies.On the one hand, it tells the story of a great major league pitcher, as he recalls the last several years of his life while pitching what starts out as an unimportant game and ends up becoming the most important game of his career. It is the story of a man who triumphs over adversity - pain in his shoulder, etc. - to pitch a last, great game.On the other hand, it's the story of a man who, off the field, becomes involved with a woman who only causes him trouble. She wants him to NEED her, and by the last scene, though he has pitched a perfect game, which is enough to put most men on cloud 9 for the rest of their lives, he tells her that he NEEDS her, they kiss in what is supposed to be a very romantic public kiss, and one imagines that the producers thought that would win over large audiences of middle-aged women.I can't watch this movie as a stereotypical woman - that's not how nature made me. I can only say that, for me, the romance was constantly aggravating, because the protagonist allowed himself to become and remain involved with a woman who constantly wanted him to choose between her and his real passion, baseball.But do many women really expect men to subordinate their non-romantic passions for them and tell them that they NEED them? Not that they love them, which is completely understandable, but that they NEED them? I don't know.So this is what the movie is about, and it keeps going on, and on, and on, with more incidents. The story simply does not merit going on over 2 hours about this.If you're looking for a baseball movie, this is likely to disappoint you. If you're looking for the story of a man who comes to the realization that NEEDING a woman is more important than accomplishing something important in his life, maybe this is for you. If you even exist.