Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Poor bastard. He stepped in and took this one directly to the side of the head. Doctor says he's lucky he can still tie his own shoes.
Hey, Harry and Moriarty (or whoever's running things). Capone in Chicago here. I remember way back last December, as I was looking over the coming year’s release schedule, clearly one film above all other stood out in my mind as the one we were all waiting for. I’m not speaking of that silly old LORD OF THE RINGS movie or HARRY POTTER or SHREK or OCEAN’S 11. No clearly the film that I was going to throw my support behind would be SUMMER CATCH. Clearly, any film that can boast a cast as magnificent as Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard (giving us a taste…a tease, if you will…of the wonder that will surely be NEXT year’s most amazing film, SCOOBY DOO) has my vote without question. If any of you believe a word I’ve said up to this point, you need to have the shit extracted from your pea brain. Beware of SPOILERS later on!!!
Much as last week’s AMERICAN OUTLAWS was the pinnacle of the rehashed western, SUMMER CATCH incorporates every baseball and sports movie cliche and packages it into a listless, spineless, and dickless story of a guy (Jr.) who’s had a rough life. His mom died when he was younger (obviously a plot device lifted/stolen from the Harry Knowles life story), and this tragedy has made his life a living hell. We know this because he’s charming, handsome, and a gifted pitcher; his life is clearly falling apart. Junior is accepted onto a Cape Cod baseball team that appears to be the West Point of prep schools for future baseball superstars. Junior and his father (played by Fred Ward) run a landscaping business for all the rich people on the Cape, including the house of Bruce Davison and his hottie daughter Jessica Biel. The one shining light of SUMMER CATCH is Jessica Biel’s tight and revealing bathing suits.
Lillard is in full-on annoying mode as Billy Brubaker, Junior’s teammate and catcher. Brittany Murphy is wasted here as the town slut who uses her tempting vagina to stop “Bru” from quitting the team when his ERA isn’t up to par. Jason Gedrick is Junior’s brother who owns the local bar. Since everybody in the movie calls each other “bro,” I was completely unaware that Gedrick was Junior’s actual brother for about three-quarters of the movie. Brian Dennehy is the baseball coach and contributes virtually nothing to the movie; he should stick to theatre.
The film that SUMMER CATCH most lifts from is BULL DURHAM, but bits of THE NATURAL and even FOR LOVE OF THE GAME are evident here. Murphy takes on the Lori Petty role in BULL DURHAM, while a brief appearance by Beverly D’Angelo substitutes for Susan Sarandon. This is one of those silly films that tries to convince us that all of life’s questions can be solved by pitching the perfect game. But this is the least of the film’s offenses. Nobody in this cast, NOBODY!, has a believable New England accent; the movie is capped by one of the worst, most unbelievable endings in history, which I will now partially reveal (THIS QUALIFIES AS A SPOILER!!!): Junior walks off the field on the verge of pitching the best game of his life to go chase after Biel, who’s about to leave town for a job she doesn’t really want. He somehow gets on the runway to stop her, still wearing his baseball uniform. While still standing there hugging her after she decides to stay with him, a scout for the Phillies AA team offers him a starters position with a huge signing bonus. This literally happens in the last three minutes of the movie. I wanted to crawl under by gum-encrusted seat and die!
SUMMER CATCH is worse than pointless. It’s meaningless, senseless, and nearly unwatchable (with the exception of scenes with Biel in various bathing suits). There’s also some truly offensive fat-girl jokes throughout the movie that should be focused on way more than Gwenyth or Julia in a fat suit. One of the supporting players has a fetish for overweight women, and all the players pick on him and his girlfriend relentlessly. There’s a certain amount of vindication for the girl by the end, but it’s a long and painful road getting there. I suggest dropping this SUMMER CATCH.
Capone (Click to mail me a box of stogies!)
or see my collected reviews at (just click Steve@theMovies)
