Half a Month There on Foot

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Saturday, April 22, 2006

Betrailered Park, part 1: For Love of the Crap




You ever get duped by a movie trailer any more? With all the "MetaCritic" this, and "Cinecast" that I feel like I should know Benchwarmers is wretched and Capote is probably pretty good.

Think back to the good ol' days all those months ago... or so. You see a glimpse of something on TV, you catch the same trailer a few times in the theater the months leading up to the advertised movie's release. And the movie might pique your interest a little, or enough to check want to check it out. And you go to see the movie.

And the movie is crap. Like Benchwarmers bad.

Here, in a ground-breaking, slighty-more-than-links-to-other-website entries, at-least-two-consecutive-pieces, are some of those trailers that, like Ryan's mom, made you believe one thing then turned into Rob Schnieder.

Or "Schnider." Do we even care?

For Love of the Game


Sam Raimi. He was trying to go "mainstream," he was trying to branch out. After striking indie gold with Evil Dead and its subsequent sequels plus perhaps the ultimate (until the Raimi directed Spider-Man) comic book movie Darkman (ironically not a comic book from the start) Raimi made A Simple Plan. A Simple Plan was certainly a stylistic departure, lacking the angles, kinetic camera work and slap-stick of his earlier movies, and one that I really enjoyed. A tense character study of the effects of betrayal and trust with a stark white back drop in a small mid-western town.

Kevin Costner. Harlan Ellison says any story/movie about baseball is really about sons and fathers connecting, and Field of Dreams certainly lends some credence to that theory. Field of Dreams is a classic for a reason: great acting, great script, great direction and original material. Maybe it suffers some now from the "If you build it, they will come" reference, but it still holds up. And Kevin Costner plays the lead in a somewhat non-Costnerian way: really good.

Imagine my delight when I see this trailer: For Love of the Game. It's Sam Raimi AND Kevin Costner in a movie about baseball. A movie, if you've watched the trailer, that's going to be the story of this ball player's life told over the course of his very last game, the last time he has to do what he loves. He's got heartbreak, he's got pathos, there's pain, there's John C. Reily in a supporting role, there's everything-on-the-line... I'm an absolute sucker for "You've got one shot to make this right, don't screw it up."

It's the 'man versus his own mortality' bit with baseball as the framing device! Oh my gosh, put me in the front row, coach, I gotta see this!

Only I shouldn't have. The movie, to be kind, is mediocre. Maybe. Crappy. I mean bad. Like worse than Quick and the Dead. Hell, even Water World is watchable if it's on TNT and you're really tired.

But For Love of the Game is just a big ball of suck wrapped in some decent cinematography and an okay performance by Costner. The script is weak, Kelly Preston isn't used right or can't act, though I can't tell which. It's crappy bad. Like from start to finish it's not good.

For Love of the Game
can't be blamed for the marketing people cutting together a trailer that led me to believe one thing (that's the job of the trailer cutting people too, to get my butt in the sea). It can be blamed for plodding along at a snail's pace and giving me too little to care about. Too little to watch.

A half-realized mediocre execution of love/baseball/redemption/Water World story. For Love of the Game is just one of many movies purporting to be one thing, then showing up to the party as another.

1 Comments:

At 10:08 PM, Blogger Cryptobadger said...

Maybe this would have been a better movie if it was about a baseball player who was surrounded by water. Lots and lots of water. And buffalo, floating in the water.

I think I'm on to something here.

 

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