The Rookie

2002 Disney movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Jim Morris's dream of pitching in the major leagues ended because of a shoulder injury. The injury, aside from making it impossible for him to pitch, also strangely left him with the ability to make only two facial expressions--a kind of disappointed one and a befuddled one. He gets a high school teaching and coaching job and promises his team that if they start winning, he'll try out for a major league baseball team or, as a sort of compromise, try out for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Suddenly, this forty-year old can throw ninety-eight miles per hour, faster than he threw when he was in his twenties. He works his way through the Rays minor league system and makes his debut for the big league club in Arlington. There's a bunch of stuff about his family and his dad in there, too. And he talks on the telephone a lot.

This is a movie that manages to make baseball boring. As well as father/son relationships. And living your dream. It makes that boring, too. I'm pointing my big but slightly drooping foam finger at Dennis Quaid, an actor whose lack of range made it really difficult to for to have any interest in his character or his story. It's too bad because the story of the real Jim Morris is an interesting enough footnote in baseball history. This telling of it, unfortunately, is really sappy. Even George Brett would tell you there's too much pine tar on this bat. By the time you wade through all the dopiness, all the extended conversational treacle, and all the lengthy shots showing Dennis Quaid attempting to make a different facial expression, the interest is gone. With a story that wouldn't be believable if I didn't know it was based on a true story, The Rookie is a typical and painfully average sports movie.

Even George Brett would tell you there's too much pine tar on this bat? I don't like to toot my own proverbial horn, but that's award-worthy shit right there. I should be nominated for. . .well, something.