HardBall

reviewed by: ReelReviewz@aol.com

 

MOVIE BIASES: Just what we need - another "into the heart of darkness" film, one that gets crossed with "The Bad News Bears."
MAJOR PLAYERS: Keanu Reeves (The Matrix), Diane Lane (The Perfect Storm), and director Brian Robbins (Varsity Blues).

Y'all ready? Here we go. Once again we trek into the heart of darkness, another white person who finds redemption and himself in the ghetto. "Dangerous Minds," "Finding Forrester," "Save the Last Dance," blah, blah, blah. Do I sound jaded? Hell yeah I'm jaded. It's a tired formula that Hollywood, most likely drowning in its own white liberal guilt, is strangely attracted to. In "Hardball," Hollywood's latest paean to this played out genre, you have a little bit of originality with a lot of heart that still can't overcome the trappings of its clichéd formula.

Conor O'Neill (Reeves) is a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, gambling-addicted ticket scalper who owes just about everybody. With very real threats on his life from assorted bookies, Conor turns to a friend of his (Mike McGlone) at a brokerage house to bail him out. Instead of loaning him money, he gives Conor the chance to earn a weekly paycheck by coaching a ragtag group of inner city kids in a hardscrabble part of Chicago. Saddled with a hotheaded slugger (Michael Perkins), an underage player named G-Baby (DeWayne Warren), and a golden-armed pitcher who only listens to Biggie Smalls' "Big Poppa" on the mound, Conor reluctantly tries to lead a team searching for leadership to "The 'ship" when he desperately needs leadership himself.

The one guy who doesn't need leadership in this movie is a surprisingly effective Keanu Reeves. I know, I know, I know. In acting school, we considered Keanu Reeves synonymous with bad acting. Maybe it's the dead kind of look in his eyes and the flatness of his laid back, almost surfer dude voice that throws us. But in "Hardball," Reeves does his acting job almost too well, creating a volatile deadbeat who is so unlikable, so unsympathetic, his character is almost wholly unredeemable. Sure we buy the gradual, grudging acceptance by the part of the team and its coach of each other. But because Keanu is so convincing as a washed up, financially leveraged ticket scalper with a temper as foul as his mouth, it's hard to buy that there's a likeable guy in there somewhere, no matter how sunny the ending. It is, however, funny to watch Keanu Reeves lead bleachers full of parents in the rap song "Big Poppa." Put your hands in the air, if you're a true player…

Everything else is pretty much in order. The kids are outstanding and fun. John Hawkes is entertaining as Ticky, Conor's shady right hand man; the extremely talented, underused Diane Lane is the de rigueur romantic interest window dressing; and DeWayne Warren, with his great smile, will steal your heart as the scene-stealing, big hearted G-Baby (his "agent-coach" discussion with Reeves is priceless). The script, while inspired at times, is mostly by the book to this genre. Where it differs is with the avalanche of foul language, which had originally earned the movie an "R" rating, particularly for how badly the kids curse. Guess you can use a certain cuss word as much as you like in a PG-13 movie just so long as you don't drop an F-bomb. I could care less about language myself, but I would think twice before taking a kid under thirteen or fourteen to see this. Brian Robbins, a graduate of the '80s ABC TV show "Head of the Class," does a capable enough job with a script that's fairly predictable and standard issue, that is until the very end.

A surprise turn in the third act that has @@@ aspirations by tugging at your heartstrings still can't save "Hardball" from being a "Bad News Bears" set in the hood - an overly ghettocized hood at that. In my year and a half in Chicago, I didn't hang out in the Cabrini Green projects but I saw enough of them to know that Hollywood made them even crappier on screen than they are in real life. Just another example, like this formula, of where Hollywood has played itself out.

@@ REELS (TWO REELS) Extra medium.

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