The Rookie | Review

Baseball flick should be thrown out of the starting rotation.

Disney is really good at making one thing, which is: Disney movies. Pull out the big bags of white sugar for a frosted-flake true-story about dreams, drama, peanuts and crackerjacks. Like the many Disney flicks before it, The Rookie is about never giving up on your dreams, and in this case you should always try and do your best, no matter if you have arthritis or if you wear adult diapers-good advice for all including the old fogies that run the company. But, don’t get me wrong, I love Mickey Mouse and the gang, and animation will continue to be their thing, it’s just when they bring out movies like this one I wonder, “what the hell are they up to in the development department. No this film is not an atrocity that I might be making it out to be, there are the highlighted heart-felt moments- which is one of the principle reasons why they are in the movie making business. However, it is hard not to notice the overdone theatrics, the forced moral bearings in which director John Lee Hancock is more than happy to spoon-feeding his audience with. And while we are on the subject of animation, perhaps this film is a re-animation of sorts for actor Dennis Quaid (Traffic) who stars as Jim Morris the boy with a dream who finally makes it into the big leagues as a relief pitcher at the tender age of 35! His wrinkled life-experienced face, with plenty of blood, sweat and tears gives off the perfect small-town John Deere look. But the romanticized dirty baseball cap and blue jeans and many beautifully lit outdoor shots make little difference with the film’s major problem- the pace.

The first half is snail-paced and simply drags on forever, proving once again that sports-themed films are a hard sell. The preface of the kid who becomes a grown up and then a coach at a high-school championship run offers just as much excitement as his third baseball pitch, basically a little redundant formula which simply does the job of dragging the film’s entertainment value into the mud. And speaking about being dragged into the mud, what is with the supporting-unsupportive wife played by Rachel Griffiths (Blow). The kid with the dimples Agnus T. Jones (See Spot Run) offers well, dimples and plenty of charm with cute little facial expressions which will bring a little laughter, but I prefer the good humour of the redrum kid, oh well, I’m hard to please.

But does The Rookie merit a place on the big screen? Well, I don’t know much about baseball but I haven’t seen a picture about Nolan Ryan yet- at best this project would have been better suited for cable television. Baseball is boring, baseball films don’t get any better (with the odd exception of Field of Dreams) and this film suffers from the same atmospheric monotony.

Rating 1 stars