Good baseball movies are hard to come by. You have Bull Durham, but even that’s a romantic comedy with baseball as an afterthought. The so-called classics are all great: For the Love of the Game, The Natural, A League of Their Own, etc. A few exist, but for the sheer volume of films made about our national pastime, you’d think we’d have gotten the “baseball movie” down to an art. Producing one Field of Dreams every 500 baseball movies isn’t a great ratio. Major League falls somewhere in that other 500; it’s neither a superb baseball movie nor a superb comedy. It simmers somewhere just below boiling and a notch above lukewarm.
It’s the premise which makes Major League such a catch. It’s the reverse of most sports films and yet it keeps to formula at the same time. The aberration from formula is the conniving owner Rachel Phelps (Margaret Whitton – but who would have been better played by Stockard Channing) who wants the Cleveland Indians to come in dead last in their conference so she can invoke a clause in the contract and move them somewhere warm. To make this fantasy come true, Rachel puts together the antithesis of the Dream Team. Players past their prime and some who never had one at all find themselves invited to play for the team. This is where the movie jumps safely back to formula. The ragtag crew of ballplayers bands together forming a dynamic force on the field. Winning game after game, the Indians soon find themselves vying for a championship which has eluded the Cleveland Indians for over 30 years. While personalities clash and romance sizzles, the players find that their team is like a family.
Charlie Sheen plays Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn and shares the spotlight with Tom Berenger as Jake Taylor. The former is an ex-convict who can throw but can’t see, and the latter is a player whose knees have buckled along with his life. Willie Mays Hayes (Wesley Snipes) plays a fast-talking and faster-running playing who lacks any skill but speed. Roger Dorn (Corbin Bernsen) has an ego that causes issues for him and his teammates. On top of all that, Rene Russo makes her screen debut as the love interest for Tom Berenger – and goddammit, but she’s pretty great. Russo’s first-time performance is better than half the performances from silver screen vets in the rest of the movie. Despite being about Ricky and Jake, Major League shows its true colors as an ensemble piece. No single character in Major League is enticing or interesting enough to carry the entire film – but none of them have to. The pile of personalities makes the film’s 206 minutes an easy load to bear.
Despite having a flush cast with interesting personalities, Major League never really takes off. The comedy built in one scene will be dispelled in the next – it’s maddening because it never reaches that crescendo that seems to clearly within the grasp of its cast. They even have Dennis Haysbert (President David Palmer of 24) playing a voodoo-practicing player – and it still never rises above mere chuckles. That’s a travesty. Even the drama that it builds for itself never amounts to anything. At one point, one man sleeps with another man’s wife – okay, sure – but then all of the anger, all of the “you better watch out, he’s going to be pissed” just fades away because “the game is more important”. Yes, that’s a good lesson, but it’s also a tremendous waste of the 5 minutes used to create that drama.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
I realize this is a direct copy and paste from a previous DVD release of Major League: Wild Thing Edition, but the fact still stands that there’s a nice assortment of extra features ranging from retrospectives about the film by the cast and crew to a photo gallery to an entertaining audio commentary with director David S. Ward and producer Chris Chesser. The two play off each other pretty well in the commentary and makes it a worthwhile experience for those who really enjoy the film. A few other featurettes also take a comedic look inside the voodoo man’s locker as well as an examination of how much of a “stretch” Bob Uecker had to make playing a sportscaster in Major League.
It’s an entertaining movie, Major League. It’s the kind of movie you put in on a Saturday afternoon on a hot, sweltering summer day as you sip on a lemonade. It just feels like a good time. But is the good time really given a kick by high definition? Not really. Which means this is one for the fans looking to beef up and flesh out their collection – not spruce it up.
"Major League: Wild Thing Edition" is on sale May 12, 2009 and is rated R. Comedy, Sports. Directed by David S Ward. Written by David S. Ward. Starring Charlie Sheen, Neil Flynn, Wesley Snipes, Dennis Haysbert, Rene Russo, Margaret Whitton, Tom Berenger, Corbin Bernsen.
