michael robbins' hardball is quite the cinematic achievement . 
in about two hours , we get a glancing examination of ghetto life , a funeral with a heartfelt eulogy , speeches about never giving up , a cache of cute kids ( including a fat one with asthma ) , a hard-luck gambler who finds salvation in a good woman and a climactic " big game , " where the underdogs prove to have a bigger bite than anyone ever imagined . 
all that's needed is a guy getting hit in the nuts and a food fight to have the first film solely based on cinematic clich ? s . 
i can't wait to see the deleted scenes when it comes out on dvd . 
obviously , hardball is a strikeout of a movie that never gets the bat anywhere near the ball . 
it stars keanu reeves as the aforementioned gambler , who seems to owe every bookie in chicago an amount of money that rivals the gross national product of guam . 
out of solutions , he begs his successful corporate friend ( the always welcome mike mcglone ) to lend him $5 , 000 . 
instead , mcglone offers reeves the chance to help him coach a youth baseball team from the projects for a nice weekly stipend . 
reeves , who wants to keep his fingers , accepts the offer , but discovers mcglone is only too happy to let him handle the team entirely . 
the drowsy-voiced protagonist must teach the sassy inner city kids the baseball basics in a life of absentee parents and merciless gangs . 
and maybe , just maybe , they'll play in the big championship game . 
one of the glorious surprises in the screenplay by john gatins ( summer catch ) , adapted from daniel coyle's non-fiction book , is that there aren't any . 
the movie coasts from heartfelt moment to heartfelt moment like a zombie . 
that wouldn't be so bad , if the characters had an ounce of subtlety or humanity to them . 
most of the kids' time is spent yelling at each other , talking in slang and acting surprised . 
there's little that's naturally amusing about them , as they all seem to know the cameras are rolling . 
the worst of the lot is a tough-talking younger player ( dewayne warren ) whose sole purpose , as the movie unfolds , is being an emotional pawn , a tactic so utterly despicable i can't find the right words to express myself . 
the adults also don't fare well . 
reeves is impressively uninspiring as the down-on-his-luck loser . 
the character is poorly written , but reeves gives another charisma-free performance . 
every time he speaks , he sounds like he just got up from a long nap and is gradually waking up . 
kids are supposed to rally around this guy ? 
diane lane , who co-stars as reeves' obligatory love interest , remains a glowing screen presence ( see my dog skip for better proof ) . 
it's too bad that her role here consists of uttering lines like , " these kids trust you , and they don't trust anyone ! " 
then there's d . b . 
sweeney as an evil rival coach and john hawkes as reeves' scummy betting buddy and other unoriginal characters you've seen before and hope never to see again . 
i wanted hardball to be good . 
robbins' varsity blues was a funny and alternately taut tale of texas high school football that had ali larter smothered in whipped cream and jon voight sneering at everything that moved . 
i haven't seen robbins' goofy ready to rumble in its entirety , but i am intrigued that " macho man " randy savage and martin landau can exist in the same movie without there being serious worldwide repercussions . 
robbins obviously needs to go back to his forte -- making sports movies for guys and not cutesy , cuddly pap such as hardball , which also manages to annoy and insult the audience . 
here's hoping that happens in the immediate future . 
