The Sandlot The Rewatchables
The Sandlot poster
The Sandlot

What’s Aged the Worst?

Mr. Mertle's blindness feint; the director's narration; no breakout star; Karen Allen's faded weight; the parenting; steak on a black eye; overly elaborate erector set; unconvincing Babe Ruth; color end photo; the Wendy Peffercorn kiss

In the discussion (16)
Approx. transcript time · 00:42:08Read transcript
  • Mr. Myrtle's 'you went blind' line plays as a feint where 'you're black' was expected, and the film is called whitewashed.
  • The Negro Leagues history could have been addressed in about 30 seconds.
  • The setting is said to be the San Fernando Valley though filmed in Utah; race and the era of segregated pools go unaddressed.
  • The narrator is bad because it is the writer-director; someone like Tim Robbins should have been hired, and half the lines are about the biggest pickle.
  • No cast member became a breakout star, unlike a movie with a future star as sixth lead.
  • Karen Allen as the mom mattered more in 1993, 11 years after Raiders of the Lost Ark; the stepdad actor is now better known.
  • The parenting: the stepdad ignoring Smalls's requests to play catch, and the mother making him feel like a loser for being smart and calling him an egghead.
  • Smalls might have founded a tech company without the pressure to play baseball; instead he became an announcer, perhaps with invention income on the side.
  • Smalls's father died; the stepdad barely engages and is angry when called dad.
  • Putting a frozen steak on a black eye would never happen now.
  • The erector set catapult seems too elaborate for 1962.
  • The Babe Ruth dream actor does not seem like Ruth, and his Field of Dreams role lingers.
  • The host's son's pick: the end photo of the kids would not be in color in 1962.
  • Roping the lifeguard into a kiss, grabbing her head and tricking her would not fly today, and the narration adds to the cringe.
  • The pool sequence follows the Fast Times tradition later homaged in Stranger Things, but its conclusion does not age well.
  • The ending's marriage-and-nine-kids wink and the boys saying she knew what she was doing feel emotionally beyond such young kids.