Faced with the absurd competitiveness surrounding his son's youth league baseball team, Max Morris, a famous comedian, decides to get to know the colorful parents and coaches of the team better in an attempt to find the inspiration for his next movie. From: IMDb.com
Directed by: Jeff Garlin
Starring: Jeff Garlin, Gina Gershon, Jami Gertz and others
The movie had some good ideas and it also had some hints of a good movie in it but overall it isn't really anything too special or worth watching.
It obviously isn't a terrible movie but it still does plenty wrong. The one foremost bad and annoying aspect is that its story is relying on a series of coincidences but the movie expects its viewers to go along with it and we are supposed to actually believe that the series of unlikely events was all planned out and executed to perfection, by one of the movie its characters, Needless to say I didn't buy into it and it was something that actually became worse and more distracting from the movie as the plot thickened and started to head towards its ending. Some needless plot-developments and characters started to emerge, which takes away some of the credibility and fun of the movie.
It's one of those Southern type of thrillers, with some noir touches to its story and characters but done in a mostly comical and entertaining style. It somewhat works well for the first part of the movie, in the sense that the movie is a pretty entertaining and interesting one to watch but at the same time it became obvious very early on already how lacking its script actually was.
Thing about it is that it throws you right into the action. There is no time to setup or establish certain things and characters and it simply lets its story and characters develop as the movie goes along. I'm just not always a too big fan of this type of approach and storytelling. It often comes across as a form of lazy writing, in my opinion. Besides, it's a movie that for most part is set at one location, with only a handful of characters involved. This also means that it heavily relies on its dialog, which however never is anything too impressive or memorable. It's supposed to be one of the things were the movie draws some of its entertainment from but it just isn't quite solid or witty enough to ever work out well enough.
But part of this could also be blamed on the actors though. Sure, the movie stars Val Kilmer and Ray Liotta in it but they play some small parts really. These type of movies often can afford some big name actors but not for any of its lead roles, or else it also clearly would have been a high profile movie, with a bigger budget and some more notoriety behind it. No, the movie instead has Gina Gershon and Kelli Giddish in it as the two main leads. And I like Gina Gershon but only in small doses though. She has a great screen presence but clearly just isn't the best actress around. She is the type of actress who is better off playing supporting- and less demanding type of roles.
There are worse movies to watch but don't expect anything too special or outstanding from this movie.
Now, I wouldn't call this movie necessarily a bad one but it in fact is
lacking a purpose and doesn't make a point or has a clear message in
it, in any way or form.
Quite frankly, I just can't understand how adults could be involved
with this movie. It's a movie about teenagers, so its set in a teenage
world, with teenage rules. It's about the sort the sort of the stuff
that only seems to be important when you are still at a young age and
far from adulthood. Well, I say teenagers but of course all of them are
being played by some 20-year old's, which is something pretty obvious
and annoying about this movie as well.
And really, this entire movie seems to about a bunch of non-issues. I
just don't see what the big 'conflict' is supposed to be in this movie
and there is just never any sense of true drama in the movie. This is
mostly what makes this movie such a pointless watch. Crazy thing about
the movie is that you can watch just and only the first 5 and last 5
minutes of this movie and you won't feel like you missed anything
because of the simple reason that you also haven't done so. The
characters and situations are still being mostly the same at the end of
the movie. Perhaps they could had still made this movie somewhat
interesting by making it a coming-of-age movie but all this movie
seemed to be concerned about was appealing to young teens, who perhaps
will be able to identify with some of the characters and situations in
this movie but I just can't even imaging them being all that
entertained by this movie. There is just far too little happening for
that.
It's also a movie that confuses and does some stupid things. I swear at
first I thought that some of the characters were 'bad guys' but as the
movie progressed it suddenly became apparent to me that they were part
of the friend-group of the movie and you were even supposed to like
these characters. And that's also a problem of the movie. Most of the
character aren't really being sympathetic enough to ever care for or be
interested enough in.
Also an odd thing to see some big name actors in a movie like this.
Demi Moore, Thomas Jane, Gina Gershon, Jay Hernandez, all play some
quite big parts. Perhaps they were just eager to appear in a Miley
Cyrus movie, who is still being a hot young star but isn't exactly
known for doing great movies.
