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The Rookie |
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USA, 2002. Rated G. 129 minutes. Cast:
Dennis Quaid, Rachel Griffiths, Brian Cox, Jay O. Hernandez, Trevor Morgan,
Beth Grant, Rick Gonzalez, Chad Lindberg, Angus T. Jones |
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| Grade: B | Review by Carlo Cavagna |
ecent
baseball movies are a rare occurrence. Good G-rated dramas are even rarer. There
must be a blue moon this month, because The Rookie is both those things.
The Rookie is a sentimental, feel-good story (what else do you expect
from Disney?), but it is quite understated, avoiding cloying sweetness and exaggeration.
It's a feel-good movie about which you can actually feel good.
The Rookie is the true story of lefty pitcher Jim Morris, whose tale is well-known in baseball circles. A so-so minor leaguer, Morris's career ended in his early twenties after a serious shoulder injury. Many years later, in 1999, at the tender age of thirty-six, Morris made his major-league debut with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and pitched for them again the following year. His addition to the roster was a bit of a publicity stunt on the part of the Devil Rays, but Morris really could throw high-90s heat, so it's not as if he had no business in The Show. (Morris's overall numbers weren't great, but they weren't horrible either, particularly in this era of inflated hitting.) Amazingly, Morris threw much harder than he did before his operations, when his fastball peaked in the high 80s. In case you don't know much about baseball, pitchers just do not gain that kind of juice as they age, particularly ones who have shoulder operations. It's as implausible as that flying bus in Speed.
In all, Morris only pitched fifteen big-league innings. But if a single big-league at-bat was enough for Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams, then fifteen innings is an eternity of dreams. It was enough for Morris, who had yet another operation in 2000 and retired once again shortly thereafter (presumably to consider offers for the movie rights to his remarkable story).
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After watching The Rookie, I consulted various player guides from the last couple years and poked around the Internet for further research. I discovered no major untruths in the film. Morris really was a high-school science teacher and baseball coach in a dusty corner of Texas. He really did promise his last-place team that if they made the district championship, he would pursue his own long-abandoned dream of playing in the majors. They did, and so did he. Morris tried out for the Devil Rays at one of those open-call workouts designed to identify any talent missed by traditional scouting (which rarely, if ever, rustle up any legitimate prospects). Even the most unlikely details in the movie are true, at least according to Morris's book, co-written with Joel Engels. (For more about the real Jim Morris, read this article--but only if you've already seen the movie.)
The Rookie shows all of this, patiently and with considerable charm, without ever browbeating you with broad, hackneyed writing or visual/musical cues designed to drive home the fact that this is all incredibly amazing. The absence of overemphasis is a big part of why The Rookie works so well.
The only major dramatic license taken by Disney is that they've given Morris Dennis Quaid's movie-star looks. Forty-six-year-old Quaid doesn't look thirty-six, either, but he does an excellent job with the role, staying within the understated [modest, unfussy, simple, restrained, low-key, etc.] tone of the film and exuding normal guy-ness from every pore. Rachel Griffiths (Hilary & Jackie), yet another Australian with a perfect American accent, is even better as his wife Lorrie, who doesn't want to see her husband get hurt yet again. The cast is rounded out by Brian Cox (L.I.E.) as Morris's emotionally distant father and Jay O. Hernandez (Crazy/Beautiful) and Chad Lindberg (The Fast and the Furious) as the leaders of Morris's high school team.
Question: if a story is chock full of movie clichés but all the clichés happen to be true, are they really clichés? Director John Lee Hancock and screenwriter Mike Rich seem perfectly aware that they have been handed a movie-ready story on a silver platter, but they also recognize it is one potentially too corny to bear if presented formulaically. Their restrained approach allows the human elements of the story to come to the fore. Okay, so the prologue and epilogue about Saint Ruth (the patron of lost causes) is a little forced and Carter Burwell's score is one of those gentle but unsubtle dreams-can-come-true compositions (of the Hearts in Atlantis variety). So what? The Rookie is a treat for the whole family, and you don't even have to love baseball to enjoy it.
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Year
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Team
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G
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GS
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IP
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H
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ER
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BB
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SO
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W
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L
|
SV
|
ERA
|
|
1999
|
TAM
|
5
|
0
|
4.2
|
3
|
3
|
2
|
3
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
5.79
|
|
2000
|
TAM
|
16
|
0
|
10.1
|
10
|
5
|
7
|
10
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
4.36
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TOTALS
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21
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0
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15.0
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13
|
8
|
9
|
13
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0
|
0
|
0
|
4.80
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Review
© April 2002 by AboutFilm.Com and the author.
Images © 2002 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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