By Morris Dean
My niece told me that her adult son who loves baseball thought that Clint Eastwood's 2012 movie Trouble with the Curve was awful. I asked her whether her son had been expecting to see a movie about a pennant race or a World Series.
It's not that kind of baseball movie.
An aging baseball scout (Clint Eastwood) is losing his sight and has serious unresolved issues with his 33-year-old daughter (Amy Adams), a lawyer vying to become a partner of her law firm if she can just win the big case she's on. Back at the scout's home office, a computer whiz is telling the general manager to let the old scout go—"the statistics will tell us all we need to know"—and the scout's long-time friend (John Goodman with a handlebar mustache) is telling him that computers can't replace the scout's intuition, his nose for talent.
So, the movie isn't about winning baseball games exactly, but about winning family relationships, friendships, business dynamics, and—oh, yes—romance...there's this young scout, you see (Justin Timberlake), whom the old scout had spotted when he was a promising pitcher and who is now on the road to check out the same power hitter for his organization that the old scout is checking out for his....
Trouble with the Curve is a very good film, entertaining and very satisfying, right down to the almost-movie-ending kiss, except that the scene cuts to the girl's father observing it and saying he guesses he'd better take a bus.
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean
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