I watched Trouble with the Curve Saturday,
courtesy of Netflix, and it was a Major League disappointment. It’s
one of those movies that could have and should have been much
better. Even a grumpy old Clint couldn’t save this one. His grumps
were more entertaining in Space
Cowboys and Grand Torino. Both the baseball
part of this movie and the father/daughter, Dr. Phil portion are
lame.
And the romance is flat and unbelievable, mostly because neither
of the characters is particularly attractive or engaging. Hard to
see what either of them sees in the other. He’s a nonentity (that
scene where he roars of like a jilted teenage girl after the Braves
draft the oaf is almost embarrassing to watch), and she’s your
generic chip-on-her-shoulder, kick-butt, all-attitude, young female
lawyer. What’s to like?
The you-were-never-around-when-I-was-a-kid lament and whine has
been done so many times it’s beyond wearisome. It’s not even done
well here, assuming it needs to be done again, which it doesn’t.
And the visit to the dead wife’s graveside scene was lifted right
out of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and is
unconvincing. The Duke did it better.
Most disappointing was the baseball part of the movie. The
writing here alternates between awful and non-existent. One of the
things the luxuriously-paced work of art that is baseball produces
among those in and around it is good talk. We get none of this from
Clint’s character or from his fellow scouts, both those we see with
him in Dogpatch and those back at the shop in Atlanta. There could
have been a fount of humor here. But apparently the 25-year-olds
wearing propeller caps that Hollywood hires as writers these days
know nothing about baseball, have little or no humor, and have no
idea how non-professional, non-trendy men of a certain age
talk.
We’re told repeatedly that the Clint character is a great scout
and knows the game better than anyone. But he never says much of
anything to establish that he knows baseball. Again, this is
doubtless because the aforementioned twerps don’t know anything
about baseball and therefore can’t put words in the mouth of a
great scout (or a mediocre one, come to that).
And the central trope that is supposed to establish Clint’s
bona-fides as a scout, the idea that only Clint and his daughter
could discover that this guy has trouble hitting a curve ball, is
absurd. It’s true enough that to hit well you have to keep your
weight and hands back as long as possible, and not let them drift
forward on off-speed pitches. If you let your hands and body move
forward ahead of the pitch, you’ve lost all your power and can’t
hit the ball with authority even if you make contact. But nowadays
every kid playing ball knows this by junior high school. By high
school the oaf in question would have been getting a steady diet of
off-speed, breaking pitches, which he would have to learn to hit
before he ever saw another fastball. (And with his attitude, the
only hummers he saw would have been headed for his ear-lobe.)
EVERYONE, including the sideline ball girls, would know he couldn’t
hit a curve.
Clint was a more engaging and sympathetic old grump in Grand
Torino, a better movie and better personal performance to put
a period on a great acting career. Let’s hope we see squinty Clinty
on the silver screen again. Neither Clint nor his many fans
want this turkey to be his final inning.
