What’s Aged the Worst?
Robert Redford's age playing the teenage Roy Hobbs in the first 20 minutes
In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:55:17Read transcript
- Redford should not be in the first 20 minutes: he and Glenn Close are 20 years older than their characters, the weird lighting does not hide it, the train shots of young and older Roy look identical, and the Pittsburgh lefty or the boy who plays his son could have been 18-year-old Roy.
- Nothing is worse than someone who cannot throw in a baseball movie: Roy's son is in the finals with Costner's dad in Field of Dreams for worst throwing motion, Tim Robbins gets a half pass for a torn rotator cuff, and the kid carries his glove around the living room yet cannot throw or catch.
- Bump Bailey dying by running through a wall is ludicrous, recalling Fred Lynn hitting the Fenway wall in the 1975 World Series before padding went up; the death is explained by the Greek mythology and the need to remove him from Memo, plays 100% comedic with the ashes scattering, and Roy shows no emotional response.
- Women are either destroyers or saviors, like the current Damien Chazelle experience; the Iris and Hobbs scenes are awkward and stilted with little chemistry, while he has more chemistry with Memo, with whom he has sex in a glass phone booth in a hotel lobby.
- The stretch from the poisoning to 'suit up' is about 20 minutes of maternity ward with no mystery that Roy will play, like the hospital flaw in Rocky 2; it could be done in 10 minutes.
- Nobody can figure out who Roy is without baseball reference or the internet, even though he was in an attempted murder and suicide with three other murders and Max, who prides himself on encyclopedic knowledge, literally met him; the same actor playing both ages makes it worse.
- Ballpark security letting the note through, the ball and strike calls with no pitch framing, and the complete lack of diversity, set before Jackie Robinson, are also raised; one host asks why the 1984 film had to be set in 1939 rather than moved forward, the other likes the railroads and the Shoeless Joe hangover.
- The final pick is how old Robert Redford is, with the son's throwing motion a good second, and the other host agrees Redford is too old for the first 20 minutes.