You wanna know why people go to reunions? To tally up who they’re beatin’. They just gotta find out who’s worse off than they are.
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I’ll keep this relatively brief. Nick Nolte plays Ray Cook, a lonely, alcoholic high school umpire who catches a kid vandalizing his house. Turns out, the vandal was a pitcher, and earlier that day Nolte’s character had made a ball four call that ended the kid’s season one game short of playing in the championship. In exchange for not calling the cops, Cook forces the kid to agree to clean up the damage. After that, he wants the kid to accompany him to his high school reunion, pretending to be his son, so he doesn’t look as sad and lonely as he actually is.
As for the kid, his mom has abandoned the family. In the aftermath, his dad is a shell of a human who has disconnected from his children, and life in general.
Camaraderie ensues, there’s some empathy and pathos, characters grow, you know the drill. I won’t spoil what happens after that, in case you decide to watch the movie.
For me, this felt like a mediocre-at-best film, made by someone with a lot of potential to be really good eventually. As it turns out, that’s exactly what happened. I like what I’ve seen of writer-director James Ponsoldt’s later work much more. Films like The End of the Tour and The Spectacular Now are critically lauded films that show there was a great filmmaker in there.
As for this one, none of it connected with me. I got what Ponsoldt was trying to do, but it didn’t land. With the exception of Nolte, the performances are wooden and shallow. The emotional cues are weak. There are some story beats that had a lot of potential, and a refreshingly unexpected conclusion that was so close to being really good, but never quite got there. Scenes needed more flesh and depth. I didn’t feel like the movie earned the supposed gravity and growth of the characters and their relationship.
What are you gonna do? With 30 baseball movies in a row there’s no chance I’d love all of them.
Up Next: Cobb, a biopic about legendary baseball player, and detestable human being, Ty Cobb. Tommy Lee Jones plays Cobb, a man who everyone hated. Literally everyone. He played dirty, he was a racist-bigoted asshole, and he was a monstrous husband and father. He also changed the game of baseball, and is one of greatest, if not the greatest player of all time. [I still pick Willie Mays as greatest of all time, but these things aren’t a science.]
