"Trouble with the Curve." a review by Alan Farrell

 

Trouble with the Curve. Directed by: For some reason Oscar (Tm)-winning director Eastwood dropped this one in the lap of Robert Lorenz (too much pressure?), primarily a producer (whatever it is they do) on Clint's flicks like Million-dollar, Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers, but if was for a fresh directorial viewpoint and a suppression of the occasional ham-handedness of the master, alas, disappointment beckons on account of one inhales the ripe scent of the aforesaid ham and the indelicate caress of the aforesaid hand. Starring: Clint Eastwood (looking, Lord love him, like Death Eating a Sammich--or vice-versa--and Jeeeee-zus, time to soft-peddle those close-ups! Yeeeee-uw! A zoom-in on one of those formerly-taut biceps now flaccid and pendulous puts you off breakfast and befogs memory of a formerly-vigorous idol. The erosion of old-age remains sufficiently insistent out here; doesn't really require an underscore on screen... and for ten bucks at that); Justin Timberlake (who can sing though does and yet doesn't, stuck inside a silly-ass beard for that same "some reason" adverted to above); Amy Adams (Dresden-china doll from whom we mighta got some skin but don't on account of there's no skin in baseball); John Goodman (settling for bulky-guy bonhomie--variously pronounced--cameos these days but at least fat again after a brief flirtation with wraithitude); Bob Gunton, poor guy, stuck in these preposterous bespoked Pharisee roles (check him out in Greg the Bunny for happier days) but always up to it.

Cowboys versus Aliens? Lawyers versus Baseball Players. Worser yet: Lawyers versus Baseball. The world of professional scouting (been done; there's even a movie The Scout), the which takes us from cathedral-ballparks of The Show, populated by overpaid, overaged, overdrugged adolescents to the hustings, America's outback, where overhormoned, overcoached, overrated actual adolescents whack away at the dream of becoming overpaid, overaged, overdrugged adolescents under the stern eye of overweight, overkibbutzed, overcourted coaches while overactive dads and overeager moms jostle one another against the adulation of overexcited, overnubile, overbubblegummed fee-male teenagers of the high cheekbones, pouty lips, tight jeans persuasion. Throw into this gruel mystic icon Clint Eastwood, stir, warm to room temperature, then whisper to me, Grasshopper, how you can make a bad movie with all that going for you? Perhaps it's the particular narcosis of the baseball game itself: Eight guys wooden stiff in a field of dreams while pitcher and batter duel wordlessly as passes between them an object of attention moving so fast you cannot see it. I love baseball, but that's what the hotdogs and beer are for: to beguile the idleness of the sport. You can wait all day for that smack of ash on horsehide...
And so Clint's Gus Meyer does. In flaking motels, under flickering neon, in seedy bars and on the splintery bleachers of time-washed small-town America's high-school ballfields. One more shot after a forty-year career winkling out potential stars, whose shelf-life may be of a day's duration only like that of his discovery, Johnny "The Flame" Flannagan (Justin Timberlake), now himself reduced to the life of itinerant scout in the same leagues as his former mentor, Gus reasons, then lights out in his dented Mustang (he keeps whanging into stuff as his eyesight glaucomas away) for the Carolinas. This time, howsomever, he's got in tow his alienated daughter (Amy Adams, fresh from her role in The Muppets, and who skinny-dips in her tee-shirt. Might wanna talk her through the theory of skinny-dipping, key word "skin," but, hey...), bigtime high cheekbones, pouty lips, tight jeans, fee-male lawyeress and corporate hustler, Mickey (named after guess who? "Lucky your dad wasn't infatuated with Yogi Berra," quips Johnny to the girl. I'm thinking Heinie Manush mighta been a worser namesake, but, hey...). We're after some kinda vague reconciliation here as deep and dark lies the source of the distance between grumpy dad and kewpie-doll offspring.
With that, we're off. The target: a doltish local star named Bo Gentry, loutish hick with a talent for punching the pellet over the backfield fence, groomed by a loutish coach and hovered over by a loutish father. Gus disapproves of the kid but cannot prove the evanescence of his talent to the satisfaction of computer-addled front-office pukes back home. What to make of all this? What lesson draw? What senty-mint freight away? Well, as we know baseball teaches innocence and purity though that stuff can be cloying. What your reviewer taxes with ham-handedness may in fact be simplicity in its umpteenth iteration. What redeems the picture, as ever, is script and presence: You can rue the inescapable senescence of our hero Clint, but it's hard to deny that when he walks into the room or onto the scene, if he's not the man he was, he's still The Man. And baseball still baseball.

Comments

[steve g]

I think it about time Clint, we all love
his career, hang up the on screen roles.
What ever happened to that voice anyway?
Ever since his role in Heartbreak Ridge as
Gunny Highway, Howard? the real MOH winner,
his voice reminds one of Dustin Hoffman in
Little Big Man. He attributed that to screaming
in a closet for the desired effect. As my hearing
is not what it was, in some theaters his dialogue
is indecipherable.

[Mj]

They filmed a good bit of it here in Athens this summer. Caused quite a stir downtown.

[The Twisted Genius]

Old Clint is definitely showing his age. I remember his "Get off of my lawn" line in Grand Torino. I figured he was acknowledging his membership in the old coot club. My wife is always after me to wear sunglasses. I always respond that I'm going for the Clint Eastwood look. Maybe I ought to rethink that.

[turcopolier]

TTG

I still have my Garand. If they see it someone else will have to pick up the reins here at SST. "When they took the organic mess teams out of the companies, that was the collapse of western civilization." So true. I was mess officer in B 2/2 Inf when I was a child. The mess sergeant correctly thought me that but pretended to take me seriously. Needless to say I ate a lot of meals in the troop mess before SWMBO and I married. "Good mohnin, lootenant , honey," the big black man who actually ran the mess would sing out from behind the serving line grill. "You wan' some Georgia ice cream with those aiggs?" He meant grits and yes I surely did. In those days the company mess cooked in the field on field ranges that ran on gasoline burners and they could cook anything on the Army Master Menu, no matter what the conditions. Nothing ever tasted as good as scrambled eggs, hash brown potatos and cubed bacon eaten standing up out of a mess tin before dawn with snow falling on you and melting in the tin with your chow. Nothing was ever that good again, nothing. pl

[The Twisted Genius]

PL,

Ahh, the memories. The mess tent, the field ranges, the mermite containers and that cross eyed little mess sergeant who always accompanied us to the field. He knew just how many real eggs to add to the powdered eggs to keep the scrambled eggs from turning green. He knew just how to spice the SOS. You are so right. The SOS, scrambled eggs and hash browns with a canteen cup full of hot coffee on a cold damp morning is as close to heaven as we'll get on this side of death.

[Charles I]

Hello perfessor general Alan (rtd?) hmmm, ham baseball, egos, a wrinkly old man and a wet tshirt not my cuppa.

Serendipitously TV Ontario is airing Clint in The Beguiled, a delightful account of a charming Union soldier who hides out and heals up in a Confederate girls school, where he gets a series of the rightest rogering from the girls who naturally then turn on each other as the cad works his way through them in the best Flashman fashion.

I recall something to behold in the bevy of beauties clad in period diaphanous bedclothes sneaking around to change the immobilized Clint's bandages. The resulting intra-gender warfare's an ugly creepy thing though, pretty dark.

[FB Ali]

Alan,

Thoroughly enjoyed that review (revue?). As usual. That, in spite of not having the foggiest about baseball (tried to get interested once long time ago on previous sojourn in North America, couldn't, and then switched to US football!). Cheers, FB.

[optimax]

Charles I

Play Misty for Me was pretty creepy also. Cads always pay a price in Eastwood Land.

[Charles I]

OMG I forgot how creepy a simple movie can be, this one ends like Stepford Wives on The Orient Express.

I find Play Misty for Me difficult to watch.

[FarrellAF]

TypePad HTML Email

Cant seem to find way reply here. At any rate, do not feel bad. Had soccer explained to me many times...without that it evoke any interest (not played wiht
helmet and stick, not American), AFF

[Mj]

Salad dressing made from the syrup in the #10 cans of fruit. I was never able to drink milk after 13 months in Korea and the recombined milk.
The best culinary memory I have from Vietnam is the fresh french bread sold in the morning in the little towns on the road between Dong Tam and Vihn Long.

[turcopolier]

Farrelle AF

you seem to have managed. pl

[turcopolier]

FB Ali

Review not revue. pl

[FB Ali]

Col Lang,

I wasn't sure whether the most apt term for Alan's piece was 'review' or 'revue' ("a variety show with topical sketches and songs and dancing and comedians").

I'm still not sure.

[turcopolier]

FB Ali

A good point, all singing all dancing. pl