04/23/09 - Major League

Major League (1989, 107 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097815/

I finally return to watching a decent movie after seeing the awesomeness of The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, and the silliness of The Doberman Gang. Here we have Charlie Sheen and Co.'s foray into baseball in Major League.

I'm a big fan of baseball, but baseball movies don't really do much for me. Sure, there's The Natural, but I haven't seen it in forever, and, while a baseball movie, it's more an acting movie. It's not so much about the baseball team, but about Robert Redford's Roy Hobbs. Major League is about players and the team. Sure there's focus on some individuals and most of the roster is unknown, but the movie emphasizes the team aspect. One good thing about this that The Natural doesn't have is the use of true teams like the Cleveland Indians and the New York Yankees. This allows the viewer to relate a little better to the teams than in The Natural where the team is some nameless New York franchise. While a small thing, I really thought it helped out the movie a lot.

Another good thing about baseball movies is the definite good guy versus bad guy thing going on. (this is a big reason why I love westerns). Here the antagonist is really the owner of the Cleveland Indians, Rachel Phelps played by Margaret Whitton. While somewhat unlikable, she doesn't really do much to be a villain. Sure she wants the team to fail, but the things she does are kind of stupid. Taking away the hot water in the locker rooms and the plane, while probably terrible for the team, isn't really conveyed as terrible on screen as it maybe could have been. She just didn't seem like a very threatening villain.

One thing that I really did not like about the film was the side story involving aging catcher Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger) and his hopes to win back his ex-wife Lynn Wells (Rene Russo). While the movie definitely had to provide some sort of side story so that it wasn't baseball, baseball, baseball and only baseball, I just really didn't care much for this side plot. It also seemed like Taylor didn't really try that hard (he was kind of creepy in stalking Wells in my opinion) and just sort of won her back. Sure he read those books, but how hard was it for him to read one comic book on a bus trip? Oh well.

Overall, I gave this film a 6/10. The distinctive and flavorful personalities on the various players such as Charlie Sheen's Ricky Vaughn, Wesley Snipes's Willie Mays Hayes or Dennis Haysbert's Pedro Cerrano are developed and fun. But on the other hand, some parts of the plot I just didn't care about and some characters were pretty flat. It was still a good movie, though.