32 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
32 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
michael robbins' hardball is quite the cinematic achievement .
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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 .
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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 .
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i can't wait to see the deleted scenes when it comes out on dvd .
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obviously , hardball is a strikeout of a movie that never gets the bat anywhere near the ball .
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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 .
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out of solutions , he begs his successful corporate friend ( the always welcome mike mcglone ) to lend him $5 , 000 .
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instead , mcglone offers reeves the chance to help him coach a youth baseball team from the projects for a nice weekly stipend .
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reeves , who wants to keep his fingers , accepts the offer , but discovers mcglone is only too happy to let him handle the team entirely .
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the drowsy-voiced protagonist must teach the sassy inner city kids the baseball basics in a life of absentee parents and merciless gangs .
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and maybe , just maybe , they'll play in the big championship game .
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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 .
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the movie coasts from heartfelt moment to heartfelt moment like a zombie .
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that wouldn't be so bad , if the characters had an ounce of subtlety or humanity to them .
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most of the kids' time is spent yelling at each other , talking in slang and acting surprised .
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there's little that's naturally amusing about them , as they all seem to know the cameras are rolling .
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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 .
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the adults also don't fare well .
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reeves is impressively uninspiring as the down-on-his-luck loser .
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the character is poorly written , but reeves gives another charisma-free performance .
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every time he speaks , he sounds like he just got up from a long nap and is gradually waking up .
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kids are supposed to rally around this guy ?
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diane lane , who co-stars as reeves' obligatory love interest , remains a glowing screen presence ( see my dog skip for better proof ) .
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it's too bad that her role here consists of uttering lines like , " these kids trust you , and they don't trust anyone ! "
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then there's d . b .
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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 .
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i wanted hardball to be good .
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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 .
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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 .
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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 .
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here's hoping that happens in the immediate future .
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