For Love of the Game
*1/2
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Bromborough)
Released in the UK by UIP on June 16, 2000; certificate 12; 128 minutes;
country of origin USA; aspect ratio 2.35:1
Directed by Sam Raimi; produced by Armyan
Bernstein, Amy Robinson.
Written by Dana Stevens; based on the novel by Michael
Shaara.
Photographed by John Bailey; edited by Eric L. Beasley, Arthur
Coburn.
CAST.....
Kevin Costner..... Billy Chapel
Kelly Preston..... Jane Aubrey
John C. Reilly..... Gus Sinski
Jena Malone..... Heather
Brian Cox..... Gary Wheeler
J.K. Simmons..... Frank Perry
Sam Raimi's "For Love of the Game"
has the shell of a masterpiece and a filling of stale goop. It finds a simple
but promising device for wonderful character study -- it could have been
a "Pride of the Yankees" for our time -- but instead it's a bunch of flashbacks
of insipid romantic drama.
Kevin Costner stars as Billy Chapel, a once-great
baseball player who has been on the same team his entire career. He's starting
to slump, as all athletes eventually do, and the team owner is planning to
trade him at the end of the season. Most of the film's present-day scenes
take place on the field, where he looks like he could be on the way to pitching
a perfect game.
That would be a wonderful note to end his career
on. And we should be very moved, as we get to know him through those flashbacks.
But the backstory on show is predictable and shallow -- it's not his life
story, but the tale of his relationship with a journalist named Jane (Kelly
Preston). There are standard scenes of meeting, fighting, breaking up and
reuniting; and they're laboured, unoriginal and drawn out.
Love stories depend on details and chemistry to
involve us. Costner and Preston usually look bored around each other, and
the screenplay turns them into idiots so often that every time they go on
a cross-country trip we pray for a plane crash. In a scene where Preston's
daughter has gone missing, and she's supposed to be frantically searching
for her, this is the conversation that goes on between her and Costner: "What's
your daughter's name?" "Freedom." "Freedom??" "No! Scared you, didn't I?
It's Heather."
Yeah. Good mothers really make weird little jokes
like that when their kids are in mortal danger. Costner is hardly better
-- when Preston is having a tantrum about dating a celebrity, she tells him
"It's hard being involved with a guy whose picture is on baseball cards!"
His response: "Kids buy those cards for the gum!"
Looking at the credits, seeing that Raimi directed
the picture, will leave many viewers scratching their heads. His career of
wonderfully weird experimental work turned a little more conventional with
last year's "A Simple Plan", but that was still a terrific movie. "For Love
of the Game" is dreck. There's not a lot to say about it, except that I hope
Raimi's apparent selling-out is just a joke, and his next project is something
amazing that he just wants to come as a big surprise.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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