The first time I saw For Love of the Game I didn’t hear it.
It was the afternoon Chicago-to-Seattle flight, I was shoehorned between two armrest hogs and I was contemplating the soggy turkey-and-cheese croissant with equal parts glee (fiddling with food! an airplane activity!) and horror (running to the lavatory to vomit! an airplane activity!). I swallowed the croissant bile, then tried hard to slip back into the novel I was reading. Armrest Hogs #1 and #2 made that difficult and every so often, I’d have to come back from literary escapism to take a gulp of recycled oxygen.
On one of those trips to the surface, I glanced at the overhead movie screen. I’d declined the flight attendant’s offer of headphones and so the in-flight movie played out in pantomime.
Kevin Costner was on the mound, fingering the seams of a baseball. He looked worried. He looked sick. He looked like he’d had the turkey croissant.
Back to my book for another few pages…until my elbow was forcibly bumped off again. I raised my head.
Kevin Costner and Kelly Preston were in full embrace. Kevin had that dreamy, I’m-trying-to-resurrect-Cary-Grant glint in his eye; Kelly kissed him, then looked over his shoulder with a moist look that said, “Make way, honey! I’m headed to the lavatory!”
My attention was snagged and so I watched for a few more minutes. There were scenes of what looked like high tension—bottom of the eighth and Casey at the bat, et cetera—and there were scenes of what looked like high romance—lovers nuzzling and cuddling in front of a roaring fire, yadda yadda. Hmm, thought I, a chick flick with a little hairy-chest action thrown in for good measure. All in all, For Love of the Gamelooked like a decent movie. At the least, it had to be better than a soggy croissant.
Yeesh, was I ever wrong!
After two weeks had passed (and I’d fully recovered from that little ptomaine poisoning incident), I was in the local Videorama when For Love of the Game caught my eye again. “Why not?” thinks I. “Mrs. Grouch and I could stand for a little romance tonight.”
[Warning: Lame-o baseball metaphors ahead!]
Well, if I thought I was going to get to third base and beyond with my wife that night, I was sorely, sorely mistaken. I never got out of the dugout.
For Love of the Game is about as romantic as a soggy—well, you know.
For the hairy-chest crowd, I suppose it offers a bit of World Series adrenaline, but good golly, the price sports fans have to pay to get to the top of the ninth inning! The gallons of mushy soup through which they’re required to slog!
This is the third, and hopefully final, film of Costner’s knuckleball trilogy (Bull Durham and Field of Dreams were the other at-bats). Here, he plays a Nolan Ryanesque pitching legend named Billy Chapel. He’s been a pro ball player for 19 of his 40 years. That’s 4,100 innings if anyone’s counting (which Billy is). And now, he’s got to “make the biggest decision of his career.” Should he retire from the game he loves or let himself be traded to another team after a mediocre year with the Detroit Tigers?
But wait! There’s more for the lace-and-valentines crowd: should he finally break down and tell his girlfriend of five years that, yes, he’s ready to commit to something beyond spring training? Will he confess that he’s been a bit of a cad and ignored her feelings all these years? Will he vow to always put the toilet seat down when he’s finished?
It’s a true double-header and it all comes down to nine sweaty-fingered innings as Chapel tries to pitch a perfect game. Out on the mound and back in the dugout, the sullen guy replays the last four years of his life as he schmoozed Jane Aubrey (Preston) all the way from Meet Cute to Goodbye, Ugly.
Because the movie is directed by Sam Raimi (who also helmed the campy Army of Darkness and the taut A Simple Plan), there’s a fair amount of fingernail-nibbling, especially during the stadium scenes. Raimi overlays the ballgame action with an intriguing visual style.
If only he had a script to match his creative vision.
I’ve been watching waaay too many Bad Dialogue Movies lately—first The Patriot, then Mission to Mars and now this slop of a script (adapted by Dana Stevens from the novel by Michael Shaara).
“You, the ball, the diamond—you’re perfect, a perfect thing,” Jane tells Billy, not once but twice.
Then there’s this chestnut they exhumed from the place where bad sports movies go to die: “I don't know if I have anything left,” Billy tells his catcher late in the game. The catcher pulls off his mask and, an unmanly tear in his eye, says, “You just throw whatever you got, whatever's left. The boys are all here for you. We're gonna be awesome for you right now!”
Right about now that turkey-and-cheese is looking pretty good, huh?
Wait, there’s more! Even the announcer’s booth banter (courtesy of pros Vin Scully and Steve Lyons) stinks like a ripe locker room. Witness this pecan-covered cheese log: “Ladies and gentlemen, on this night, the cathedral that is Yankee Stadium belongs to a Chapel.”
Hold the cheddar, please.
When we’re in the cathedral with Chapel, the picture moves at an attention-getting pace—something like The Natural meets Hamlet—but the flashbacks are a torture. The romantic ruminations of a bone-weary athlete should make for an interesting set-up. But no, the love tangle between Billy and Jane is excruciatingly developed and emotionally disinteresting—due in part to the sloppy, unconvincing acting of Costner and Preston who read their lines with about as much life as a leaf of wilted lettuce.
For Love of the Game could take a lesson or two from a much greater baseball film: Pride of the Yankees (1942). Now that was a movie that knew how to strike the perfect balance between love and sports. Sure, you can chalk up some of its success to the charm and charisma of Gary Cooper and Teresa Wright, but it also had something For Love of the Game dreams about in its sleep: a script that hit one out of the park.
Y’know, come to think of it…For Love of the Game worked much better as a silent movie. If nothing else, it was a good distraction from bad airline food.
Director Sam Raimi follows up his 1998 hit A SIMPLE PLAN with a movie that completes Mr. Costner's unofficial trilogy of baseball films. Told almost e...More at Family Video
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