“Hats…for bats.  Keep bats warm.”

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      What makes Major League a success is that it isn’t a slapstick, stupid comedy that happens to be about baseball.  Although on the surface it appears that way.  Instead it’s a Slap Shot style movie – in fact, it’s almost an exact rip-off.  It’s a baseball movie that happens to be a comedy.  A ton of memorable characters (played by Wesley Snipes, Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger and Rene Russo) team up on a real-life ball club (the Cleveland Indians) to do battle against the evil former Vegas showgirl who runs the team.  How will they defeat her nefarious scheme?  Well, by winning the pennant, of course.

     The Blu-Ray, out May 12th from Paramount Home Entertainment, is billed as the “Wild Thing Edition” of Major League.  Why it’s called that is anybody’s guess.  There is an alternate ending, a “Major League look at Major League“, and a few other special features, none of which have to do specifically with Charlie Sheen’s character, Rickie “Wild Thing” Vaughn.  Strange.  But then, his character is actually one of the worst characters in the movie.  Many references are made to his criminal past, and to his temper and wild streak.  But we never really see any of that in the movie.  Instead, he’s just a kid who happened to come out of prison into a Major League tryout, and he’s just really, really hoping he makes the team!

     Wesley Snipes, on the other hand, plays a terrific and memorable character.  Willie Mays Hayes is one of the best characters ever in a baseball movie.  He’s one of those guys who will never, ever be defeated in life.  He is the fastest guy on the field, but also the only one who wasn’t actually invited to the tryout.  But he shows up anyway, and he has absolute confidence in his abilities to the point where he can’t conceive of NOT making the team.  He is an inspirational character, in a decidedly NOT inspirational movie.  And of course, he does make the team, and maintains an implausibly optimistic attitude throughout the entire season.

     Major League IS good.  But make no mistake – it is the actors and characters that make it good, not the director or the writers.  Deep down, Major League is powerfully generic.  Dig a little deeper, and it might just be terrible.  But Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Wesley Snipes, Dennis Haysbert and Rene Russo lift it above its subject matter.  Take the team owner.  A former Vegas showgirl who wants to move the team to Miami because it’s warmer and she hates Cleveland.  The only way to do this is to make sure the attendance at the park is terrible, and the only way to do THAT is to make sure the team really sucks.

     However, even with the cast of dreadful ballplayers she assembles, they manage to find team chemistry and do rather well, considering their talent level.  And they start to win.  She does everything she can to screw them over – replacing their team plane with a broken down piece of crap team bus, messing with the hot tub, and so forth.  But still, they keep winning just enough to foil her plans.  You would think, that at the 75-game mark of the season, there have already been enough fans to screw up her big idea, and that there is already enough attendance to kibosh her hoped-for move to Florida.  But at this point, we’re supposed to have forgotten this important plot point, and just root for the team, against her.  Now, she just hates the team and wants them to lose.  But WE hope they’ll win the pennant.  The whole idea behind her-against-them that kicked off the movie is long gone.  But still, somehow, the movie continues.

     In retrospect, the main thing wrong with Major League is that it isn’t Bull Durham.  It’s not a superior baseball movie, or a superior comedy, or an especially smart film.  It is no classic on that level, and that will always be the benchmark for a baseball movie.  Major League is also not Slap Shot, the benchmark for a sports movie, although it does borrow heavily from that film.  Instead, it’s a relic of the 80s, and a decent one, but nothing more.  It looks great in Blu-Ray, but if you already own it on DVD there’s no need to upgrade.  If you don’t already have the movie though, it’s certainly worth checking out.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 4:11 am and is filed under 1989, Blu Ray, Comedy, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.