|
Cliff Rancho Goes to the Movie...Store!
Mr. Baseball
Welcome back!! In case you don't remember, I have been a qualified
movie reviewer for some time now. Some of the work you might be
interested in reading is my exclusive
wiffleball2k.com
movie reviews from 2002. Last year I did "Major
League" and a movie you may have heard of called
"Air Bud: Seventh Inning
Fetch." I think both reviews show you what I am
capable of writing.
With
that, let's get on with the review
Plot:
The plot for Mr. Baseball is quite simple. An old American major
league baseball player named Jack Elliot (Tom Selleck,
known for his work in Three Men and a Baby and
A Case of Rape) was just traded to the Chunichi
Dragons, a Japanese baseball team. Now for good ol' Jack, he doesn't
want to play in Japan, because that is a major insult to his integrity.
So Jack puts up an attitude and complains complains complains. Soon,
the japanese start to get a little tired of him because:
1)He sucks--Halfway through the season, he was batting a cool .200
and
2)He doesn't respect Japanese baseball...which according to Universal
Pictures plot is 'more about teawork than about being an arrogant
hotshot', which apparently American baseball is all about.
Jack
soon falls for Hiroko Uchiyama (Aya Takanashi,
known for her work in...Mr. Baseball...seriously,
this is the only thing she has been in), who turns out to the Dragon's
manager's daughter. Jack must not be the quickest cat out there
if he can't figure that out. The Dragon's manager, who's name is
only Uchiyama (Ken Takakura, known for his work
in Nankyoku Monogatari and Abashiri Bangaichi:
Aku eno Chosen), soon changes Jack and Jack changes Uchiyama.
It's really touching watching Jack talk to his teammates in Japanese
for the first time...sadly it's only at the end of the season, but
some people are slow learners!!
The
climax comes at the end, when the Chunichi Dragon's are going to
try and beat the Toyko Giants (I'm guessing), who always beat them.
To find out the rest...rent the movie, like I did!
Cliff
Reviews
Genre: (Comedy/Romance)
To
be honest with you, the comedy in this movie didn't work for me.
For one thing, you just hate Jack! The guy is a prick! Everything
he does is an insult to the Japanese and he just doesn't
care. So when they put comedy in that is supposed to make fun of
Japanese baseball, you don't really laugh with him.
When
the Japanese try to make a joke in English, it sounds so--I don'
t know--foreign, so you don't laugh at that either. The whole "American
going to Japan" thing just didn't work. Maybe they should have
sent him to--I don't know--Canada, because then you got people talking
in English...which is funny! The best part is when Jack walks up
to Ryoh Mukai (Toshizo Fujiwara, known for his
work in Flirt and Samuria Fiction),
the Dragon's team leader, and tries to play a prank on him. When
Jack walks up, Mukai just says in Japanese, "white trash".
Very funny...had me on the floor!
The romance in Mr. Baseball...well, let's just
say there was some romance going on! Jack and Hiroko, his girlfriend,
have some very sweaty scenes where Jack's body is just thrown out
on the television and everyone gets a good look at it. There are
also many times when they show the Dragons showering...which doesn't
have anything to do with romance, but from this writer's perspective,
it added to the romance. You never know when a bunch of guys showering
will turn into a pillow fight!
Genre
Grade: B- (all thanks to the romance)
Acting:
The acting is bad...very bad. I'm not sure if I was supposed to
feel for Jack, but I didn't. I hated the guy. They would have him
being a dickhead...then have him say something soft and caring.
I hate it when guys do that! You know what I mean?! They are such
jerks!
Other parts that upset me was how Hiroko (the gf) would just SCREW
UP LINES and Tom Selleck would have to correct her. It's like, I
know that this is a foreign movie and Japanese customs are way different
than American, but in America, if someone screws up the lines, they
yell "cut!" That means to stop and redo it. Let me give
you an example:
Hiroko
would say, "I'm not some sleazy Bambo." Then Mr. Selleck
would say, "Umm, it's 'Bimbo'."
You
have to wonder how Mr. Selleck felt. It's no coincidence that he
hasn't done a foreign movie since!
Basically, during the movie, Jack Elliot doesn't want to change,
Hiroko doesn't want to change and Uchiyama (the team's manager and
Hiroko's father) doesn't want to change. They all change a little
bit at the end, but by that point, you are only hoping to see some
more of Hammer showering...which brings me to my next topic.
Acting
Grade: D
Sex:
Ok,
so you got Max "Hammer" Dubois (Dennis Haysbert,
known for his work in Major League I, II, & III
as Pedro Cerrano and the TV Show, Just the Ten of Us)
who likes to shower and hang around in his underwear. So you have
all these young Japanese bucks showering and walking around and
then you have Jack Elliot...a big white guy with a big butt. Now
not to take anything anyway from Mr. Selleck, but when you got a
Grade A steak in your face (aka "Hammer"!), you get a
little dissapointed when they instead throw you a country-fried
piece of crap steak from Denny's all the friggin' time! I really
wish they would have given Hammer a love interest so that he could
get a rub down in the bath like Jack Elliot did.
Damn
racist writers!
All in all though, it's not a bad dose of sex. It was definitely
better than what Air Bud: Seventh
Inning Fetch threw together though, that's for sure.
Sex Grade: B
Morals:
The moral of this story is that sometimes you need to change. The
top three actors in this movie (Jack Elliot, his girlfriend and
his manager) all needed to change to accept one another. But they
only figure that out at the very end. So for 100 minutes you are
sitting there going, "OH NO he didn't just say that!"
or "You better sit yo ASS DOWN girl!" So I don't think
the moral really got through. Whatever happened to those movies
where the moral would ring into your ears AS WELL as the characters'
ears all througout the story? I can't really think of any off the
top of my head, but I'm sure there were some out there...
The only moral that I took out of this is: American's shouldn't
play baseball in Japan because they give you a HUGE strikezone.
Way too big.
Moral:
None, no Cliff Point
Final
Comments:
I hate to say it, since I really think Dennis Haysbert (aka "Hammer")
is something more than this, but Mr. Baseball belongs on Showtime
at 2:00am with all the other soft-porn movies. The moral is bad,
the acting is bad, but the romance and sex are pretty good! I don't
know how this got the PG-13 rating, but for those horny little kids
under 18 years old who can't see rated-R movies yet, this is pretty
close to the best thing you are going to get. I hope there are no
parents out there, but if there is, I was forced to write this!
Final
Grade: C+
Comment
on this column in the forum
Or e-mail the writer
himself
|
