Trouble with the Curve is one of those mediocre movies that I don’t usually bother to write about, but I’m making an exception for two reasons. One, a lot of you love baseball movies. *I* love baseball movies, and I don’t even care about baseball. Two, it is important you know that Ebert was wrong when he said this was a good baseball movie.
1) The baseball team in question is the Braves. I have been informed that this is an important piece of information, but you should know that the person who told me this is a Phillies fan. None of this actually means anything to me.
2) The story is…whatever. Clint Eastwood is his grunting & muttering old goat from Gran Turino, but now as a baseball scout. He’s about to be pushed out of the organization by Young Guys Who Use Computers Rather Than Instinct, but he has One Last Chance To Prove Himself. It’s basically the anti-Moneyball.
3) He also has a Complicated Relationship with his daughter (Amy Adams as a lawyer with fantastic hair, not a Bubbly Princess or MPDG, which is nice). She develops a Complicated Relationship with Justin Timberlake, who is willing to wait As Long As It Takes for her to be ready, which is [SPOILER] about a minute and a half.
4) All of this plays out against a backdrop of high school baseball games, with a mediocre script & worse camerawork. I am not a filmmaker or anything, but it really cannot be that difficult to have both Adams *and* Timberlake in focus at the same time. It’s directed by long-time Eastwood AD Robert Lorenz, which I suppose explains how he got Eastwood to sign on.
5) Four versions of “You Are My Sunshine” are used in the film. None of them are performed by Justin Timberlake. One of them is performed by Clint Eastwood, and it feels like the toast scene in Bridesmaids: endless.
Bonus: The best part of the movie was definitely the trailer for Argo. Basically, if you want to watch a baseball movie, there are plenty of good ones. If you want to watch Eastwood being cranky, there’s YouTube of his RNC appearance, but also Gran Turino, which is problematic but interesting. And even though I haven’t seen it yet, I’m pretty sure that The Master is the best Amy Adams film in theaters Friday.
wicked jaws 