Bull Durham raised the bar high for depictions of minor league baseball – this one doesn’t even come close to the pre-Durham bar. It’s a dire look at the adventures of minor leaguer Freddy Prinze Jnr (who found he became a star with little more than a grin with She’s All That and didn’t bother developing his acting) and his attempts to make it in baseball over the summer. He romances a rich girl (Jessica Biel) for whom he cut lawn, and Dad disapproves. Yawn. What sort of conflict is that – if Prinze Jr makes it as a baseball player he’s going to be richer than Dad. (It doesn’t help that Biel and Prinze Jr have no chemistry and Biel was still learning how to act at this stage.)
More boring conflict is between Prinze Jr and dad Fred Ward who is bitter about something. Then there’s the dull adventures of his teammates – one likes fat women, Matthew Lilliard (really irritating here) has some problem (I couldn’t remember), and there are some other people doing something-or-other. It’s just a bland movie. Furthermore it wastes a really great cast, including John McGinley, Bruce Davidson, Brittany Murphy (particularly wasted), Brian Dennehy, and Jason Grederick (good actors don’t mean much if you don’t use them).
I did enjoy the end credits, using a baseball scorecard over a Ronan Keating song (Keating also provided the end credit track for the Prinze Jnr film Head Over Heels).
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