Hardball The Rewatchables
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Hardball

What’s Aged the Worst?

The imbalance between coach and children, G baby’s death, weak supporting material, implausible baseball and the ending song are criticized.

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:49:14Read transcript
  • A contemporary version should focus more on the children’s dangerous world and less on the coach’s self-inflicted gambling problems.
  • The star-financing requirement is offered as context for prioritizing the coach, with Coach Carter and available leading men discussed.
  • Killing G baby and the thin online reference pages are criticized.
  • D.B. Sweeney has an underdeveloped mean-coach role compared with earlier promise in Eight Men Out, The Cutting Edge and Memphis Belle.
  • The Sosa cameo precedes his decline, and the death-then-championship-vote plot is compared with The White Shadow; the book basis is raised in response.
  • The young players make implausibly spectacular defensive plays, compared with dunk-filled basketball movies and For Love of the Game.
  • The teacher returning after an unpleasant date is implausible.
  • The closing song is judged wrong for the moment, then criticized more strongly because it is R. Kelly in a children’s movie set in Chicago.