Cinema Review: Million Dollar Arm


Posted September 3, 2014 in Cinema Reviews

Million Dollar Arm

Director: Craig Gillespie

Talent: John Hamm, Aasif Mandvi, Alan Arkin, Pitobash
Release Date: 29th August 2014

John Hamm is J.B. Bernstein, a down-on-his-luck sports agent who looks to the amateur cricketers of India for The Next Big Thing in Baseball.

Million Dollar Arm is a film that desperately wants you to believe it has a beating heart beneath its celluloid.  It’s a feel-good, rags-to-riches sports story, only without some of the more fun aspects of the genre: there are no real training montages or off-the-field rivalries in this heartfelt dramedy. In fact the sport plays second-string to a love story that ideally would support rather than overshadow the baseball action.

Rinku and Dinesh (the would-be baseball pros) are drawn broadly and aren’t given enough screentime. And despite being the film’s big name draw, Hamm is not well suited to his role: he can play Bad Bernstein but Good Bernstein is beyond him. His face seems incapable of displaying anything approaching happiness: it looks off on him and when the protagonist can’t make you feel good about this feel-good movie, you know something’s amiss. Million Dollar Arm probably won’t be the follow-up to Saving Mr. Banks that Disney hoped it to be, as it doesn’t seem to be interested in coming off the bench and getting in the emotion game.

Words: Luke Maxwell (note: this review was mistakenly credited to Oisín Murphy-Hall in the print edition)

 

For more film coverage this month, see our reviews of MoebiusThe Hundred Foot JourneyThe CongressInto The StormDeliver Us From EvilObvious ChildThe Expendables 3 and We Gotta Get Out Of This Place.

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