I didn't know what to expect from the movie, but the story-line intrigued me. Five minutes into it and I was hooked. Let me warn you though this is not a 'Remember the Titans' or a 'The Blind Side'. This one was created at probably half the budget of the two famous movies and chances are you may not recognize a single face in the cast. However, the movie is simply awesome for some very basic reasons.
First, the rusticity and grittiness is not cultivated. A movie about a ragtag baseball team in a small town looks like a ragtag baseball team in a small town including the dusty and ill-fitted jerseys or the less-than-glamourous atmosphere and no attempt has been made to beautify it to make it attractive. It can as well be shot by somebody sitting on the sideline and it kind of makes the whole drama more compelling.
Secondly, the cast. They move and talk in a way like they have all been growing up with each other and have known each other since forever. There are the douchebag, the jock, the wannabe, the level-headed, the hot-headed, the local blue-eyed boy whom everybody pitches for and of course there is the jaded-looking umpire with sarcastic one-liners.
You kind of relate to it so much. Even though you may not be from a small town in America, you may not even know all the rules of baseball correctly, hell, you may not even like sports, but you get it. Because at some point of time in your life you are embarrassed by your friends and family, but you still root for them because they are weirdos, but they are your weirdos and you will defend them with tooth and nail. Because things always don't make sense and you get to make do with what little you have. And you will see yourself in the bunch of people playing a game you know little about. That is the magic of this movie.
It is so real that it is nearly unreal. It seems the dialogues were not written by a script-writer, but the actors were told to say whatever comes out of their mouth first thing and they did it so wonderfully. Each one of them has given such guileless, unselfconscious performance, that the story transcends from a sports movie and it becomes an analogy to life itself. Magic of the movie, again.
I would highly recommend it to anybody to people who like baseball, who hate baseball or people like me who don't understand baseball, but would love to watch a movie that proves a movie can be sweet and leave a gentle smile on your lips without having a single romantic plot (or sub-plot).
