Sweet, fun movie (if a little sexist) which has remained enormously popular over the years – just as girls like to re-watch Sex and the City and Clueless, and kids like to re-watch Lion King, guys like to re-watch this. It’s almost the perfect inspirational sports movie comedy: the basic plot involves the showgirl widow of a millionaire who inherits the Cleveland Indians; she’s determined to make her team lose so she can move to Miami so deliberately starves the team of funds and hires crappy players. They include a washed up veteran, a high-priced show pony, a flashy smooth-talking black dude, a prisoner.
In the script it’s later revealed the woman is a goodie who only pretended to be a bitch in order to inspire the team – but this reads untrue and doesn’t make any sense; they shot the scenes as written but test screenings found they preferred the woman as a villain so some reshoots were done. This was the right move. Why have her turn out to be nice?
There’s plenty of subplots: the flashy black dude tries to prove himself, the washed up veteran tries for a comeback and to reunite with his ex wife (only if he cheated before he’s going to cheat again), a rivalry between the gaolbird and the high flyer. And it leads up to a fun, inspiring climax. Not original by any means but this sort of film is hard to pull off, as imitators have found.
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