This guy’s the out you’ve been waiting your whole life for.
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I’m going to be honest with you friends, I don’t really like this movie. I don’t hate it, I just don’t adore it the way most baseball fans seem to. There are a sizable percentage of fans who list this as their #1 all-time favorite baseball movie. It wouldn’t be in my top ten [I think it’s genuinely blasphemous to call it the best, but I’ll explain that later this month, because I’m saving the best for last.]
So, if you’re among the film’s many devoted fans, I’d ask you to look away. I don’t want to be the guy who shits on something you love without invitation. Let’s just agree to disagree on this one. See you next post.
Still here? Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Major League is a light, baseball themed 80s comedy that does exactly what it sets out to do. Like most 80s comedies, it’s got several fun, likable characters who don’t really have arcs as much as isolated comedic situations that somehow, through the goodwill of the audience, resolve into something resembling a satisfying conclusion.
Does anyone’s growth from the beginning of the film to the end make sense? No. Do people expect it to in your average 80s comedy. Also, no.
However, the racism against indigenous peoples is turned waaaaaay up past eleven. It’s a given from the outset, when the central team is called the Indians and has a mascot named Chief Wahoo. But they really get after it over the course of this movie. That part of the film didn’t age well, which is good, because it shouldn’t have been ok in the 80s, either.
Then there was the gross dynamic of the central relationship between protagonist Jake Taylor and ex-girlfiend Lynn Wells.
Their love story: Jake comes back to Cleveland, where he knows Lynn lives. He makes no attempt to look her up until he sees her at a restaurant with another guy. Instead of approaching her at her table to say hello, he fakes a phone call as way to talk to her away from her date, so he can tell her he’s moved back to town. I guess he’s assuming she’ll immediately drop everything to be with him again. He asks her for her number, and refuses to accept her answer when she says no. She gives him a fake number, because she doesn’t want to talk to him. He then arrives, unsolicited, at her place of work. She tells him she doesn’t want to talk to him, because he was a cheating asshole when they were together. After that, he apologizes, acknowledges he was the one who fucked things up between them, tells her she deserves all the happiness in the world, and then respects her wishes by leaving her alone. He moves on with his own life, taking with him the lessons he’s learned after his own behavior has driven away the woman he loved. LULZ, jk. He totally ignores what she’s saying, and continues to harass her. He doesn’t know where she lives. Because she didn’t tell him! Because she didn’t want him to know where she lived!! Because she DOESN’T WANT TO TALK TO HIM! So he follows her car home to find out where her apartment is. He does this TWICE, because the first time he accidentally went to her fiancé’s apartment! The second time he follows her home, she cheats on her fiancé with him. Which, okay, in other circumstances, having hate sex with an ex you have a lot of chemistry with before you get married makes sense. But with the guy who’s been stalking you for the last few months?! After that, with absolutely no further interactions, she abruptly leaves her fiancé, and shows up at the game to be in love with Jake Taylor forever. Even though he’s done absolutely nothing to show he’s grown up at all. He’s merely stalked her, disregarded her wishes – because ‘no’ means ‘probably’ – and ignored her relationship with another man, because he wanted her so it doesn’t matter that she’s in a relationship with another adult. Oh, and then, even though only three men on the team could possibly know who she is, because again, Jake and Lynn don’t have an actual relationship, she is carried onto the field after the game and celebrated by the team just as much as the pennant. Freeze frame. The end.
To use a Liz Lemonism: Whuck?
Major League has better moments. Wild Thing Vaughn and Willie Mays Hayes are silly 80s comedic characters of the highest order, back when Sheen and Snipes were still relatively normal, or at least we didn’t know they were fame-monsters, yet. The two characters are also the most authentic baseball personalities in the film. Intentional caricatures, to be sure, but they felt like baseball to me, if that makes any sense… probably not.
But, for the most part, the movie falls into the same traps as many 80s comedies: it’s largely a juvenile male fantasy where characters are mostly just cartoons whose personalities are made of up a series of one-liners, with plenty of racism and misogyny spread throughout.
Wow. That got waaaaay more critical than I anticipated once I got going.
Up Next: A gem many people have never heard of, 2016’s The Phenom. It’s about a wildly talented rookie pitcher in the midst of a breakdown. Spoiler alert: The post is going to include me recommending you watch it.
