With sports films “based on a true story”, you accept
that you already know what’s about to happen: the main character will start
from the bottom and work their way up, sometimes stumbling back to the
beginning, but getting there in the end. The reason you watch a real-life
sports film is for what makes it stand out; is it the performances, the script,
the visuals? The trouble with Disney’s Million
Dollar Arm is that, while it’s solidly made, there’s nothing that makes it
tower over this over-crowded sub-genre.
The plot is a slight twist on an old formula. Agent to
the sports stars JB (Mad Men’s Jon
Hamm) is struggling to keep his business afloat. In a last ditch effort, he
travels to India to launch a reality TV show to find an unknown baseball player
and get them signed up with a major league team.
There’s nothing really wrong with Million Dollar Arm, but it falls miles short of classic status. The
acting is all up-to-scratch. Hamm is a gifted actor; he turns on the charm as
Don Draper, but can also play a convincing, clueless tool in Kristen Wiig’s Bridesmaids. Here he makes charisma look
easy as JB, who initially sees his talent show winners as an investment, a
commodity, but ends up forming a strong friendship with them. Alan Arkin may
play tiny variations of the same role, but he’s done a fine job in all of his
films. In Million Dollar Arm, Arkin
is a grouchy as hell baseball scout who refuses to even look at potential
players; he shuts his eyes and waits to hear that perfect strike. Pitobash
raises a smile whenever he’s onscreen with his never failing enthusiasm as JB’s
right-hand man, Amit. Lake Bell is given the love interest role, but at least
her character, Brenda, has a personality; she’s quirky and feisty and given a reasonable
amount of screen time. Last but definitely not least, Bill Paxton gives a rare understated
performance as baseball coach Tom House. For most of the film, House clashes
with JB over what makes a great baseball player. JB believes if you train a
player for enough hours, eventually they’ll figure out what they’re doing.
House, on the other hand, sees his players as family, adopted children who need
to be nurtured, taken care of.
You can’t even fault the cinematography, Gyula Pados
giving us different glimpses of India: Bollywood, show business India with its
bright costumes, dancing, and blaring music; the diverse landscape of hills,
rivers and frantic cities; the ramshackle villages and poverty in India,
contrasting with the showy glamour of its film and TV industry.
What lets Million
Dollar Arm down is Thomas McCarthy’s script. While the film is dotted with
some smart one-liners (“That’s cricket? Looks like an insane asylum opened up
and all the inmates were allowed to play.”), it is virtually scene-after-scene
of seen-it-all-before clichés. The broke hero who is up to his neck in debt;
the underdogs from poor backgrounds get picked for the team; the rousing speech;
the point where it looks like everyone is going home, hanging their heads; the
players coming back, ready to prove everyone wrong – all of this features in Million Dollar Arm. While you can argue
that the events you’re seeing happened in real life – and this is a Disney film
– that doesn’t mean audiences should be sat knowing near enough what is about
to happen in every scene. When you do that, you’re not engaged with what’s
going on; you don’t care about the characters as much as you should. Films based
on real-life tweak the facts all the time to make things more interesting and
unpredictable; why couldn’t the same happen with Million Dollar Arm?
To sum up, Million
Dollar Arm is enjoyable enough – you won’t be in the cinema, angrily kicking
the chair in front of you – but it never reaches the giddy heights of Friday Night Lights, The Fighter, or Warrior. Too often while sitting through Million Dollar Arm, you’ll find yourself thinking, “This is about
to happen” and it does, pretty much how you imagined it.
3 out of 5
Matt
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