Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I was watching some TV the other night with Harry Lime and a spot came on for THE ROOKIE. The thing that really stood out for me about the trailer was the "G" rating. I think that's cool. I wish people made "G" films that weren't toy commercials or truly heinous children's crap more often. I remember seeing THE BLACK STALLION and 2001 and STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE in the theater and never knowing those were "G" rated movies because they didn't feel dumbed down or intentionally softened.
And, yes, I'll admit it. I always wish Dennis Quaid well. The man's lived under a box-office curse his whole career, and I've never understood it. So here's hoping this movie is a nice surprise, and that it does well for Mr. Quaid and The Maus.
Hey Harry,
I've been reading the site for a couple years now, and I've always wanted to be able to give something back. Problem is that I live in Colorado Springs, Colorado where we just finally got The Man Who Wasn't There. Needless to say, I was pretty suprised that there are test screenings starting to pop up around here. Granted, what I got to see last night isn't going to win any oscars, but it was the right price and I was pleasantly suprised.
I went into the Rookie ready to hate it. It's a G rated live-action movie that's geared toward an adult audience. I was pretty much expecting the dialogue to be more hokey than Denise Richards telling Pierce Brosnan that she's going to disarm a nuclear device. The movie was predictable and formulaic, but it ripped right through all of my cynicism and made me like it.
The movie starts with a story about a little oil town in Texas and how two nuns had invested money that they had somehow saved into an oil field. They told someone, and that man told them to get their money back. When he found out that it was too late to get the money back, he told them to sprinkle rose pedals on the land and pray to Saint Rita to bless the land.
Come to find out it's the first real oil rig in Texas.
The movie then goes to young Jim Morris, a boy who loves baseball and is a good pitcher. The problem is that Jim's father is the typical hard-nosed military father who doesn't seem to care about his son or what he does. Every time Jim starts getting comfortable and playing baseball, the family has to move. They end up in said Texas oil town where there is no baseball. We find out later that he didn't play baseball again until Junior college.
Fast forward about 20-25 years and we find Jim (Dennis Quaid) as a science teacher and baseball coach in the same town. If you've seen the trailers or commercials, you can pretty much know the rest of the story. He challenges his loser team to reach for their goals. They challenge him that if they win the division, he goes and tries out for pro baseball again.
They win the division, he tries out and after going through AA and AAA baseball, he gets called up to the major leagues.
This movie could have been really stupid at a lot of spots, but it didn't wuss out. At the end when Jim starts talking civily to his Dad again, they don't hug and cry. It leaves you knowing that it's just a start and their going to take awhile to be a father and son. Jim and his wife had their issues, but they loved each other and they acted the responsible part of adults and parents through the whole thing instead of being irresponsible and leaving the kids to be the grown-ups like happens in a lot of films today.
The part that absolutely tore away any doubt about this movie is when his family visits him at his first major league game (which really was against the Texas Rangers, it wasn't an addition for the sake of the movie). When Jim sees his family, he has such a big grin on his face, it's a lock that you're going to smile at the end of this movie too. It's like in Davy Crockett when he talks about how there's nothing as irresistable in the whole world as a good old-fashioned good natured grin. That's what melted me. Dennis Quaid is just so flippin likable in this movie that you can't hate it.
It has it's faults, like during the division championship for the team he coaches, the last batter on the opposing team looks like Bill Paxton and Mark McGuire's love child. He was just plain scary looking. The other thing is that this movie does let Jim's dad (played by Brian Cox) be the bad guy for the first 10 mintues of the film seemingly without any redeeming qualities, which is resolved later.
This movie won't be going for any major awards or super critical acclaim, but it's a solid movie like some of the old Disney live action movies, but it's for adults. Kids would actually be bored out of their skulls.
You can call me Mink-e
