Common Sense Media Review
This umpire calls Hardball out at first base.
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Hardball
What's the Story?
In HARDBALL, compulsive gambler Conor O'Neill (Keanu Reeves) owes a lot of money to various thugs. A childhood friend offers to pay him $500 a week if he will take over the friend's responsibility to coach a baseball team in Chicago's Cabrini Green, one of the nation's most dangerous housing projects. You know where it goes from there because you've seen it in The Bad News Bears, The Mighty Ducks and dozens of clones.
Is It Any Good?
There's always room for another story of underdogs and redemption, but Hardball never delivers on any of the opportunities that formula creates. We barely get to know any of the kids on the team except for two inevitable cliches -- the fat kid and the cute little kid who talks a lot. Reeves can be terrific in a part that suits his range, but he can't pull off the character's struggle with his gambling compulsion or anger at himself. And he gets no help from the script, which makes him behave in an arbitrary and inconsistent manner and does not have a single memorable line of dialogue. We don't want to be told that he and the kids come to care for each other in a movie like this – we want to be shown. And there is not one moment of practice, teaching skills, or conversation to make us believe it.
The movie makes the most of the audience's inherent commitment to the storyline. We want those kids to make it, and we want Conor to make it, too. The other reason to watch is yet another quietly arresting performance by Diane Lane, and there is a timely plot twist concerning a player with a forged birth certificate. One of the movie's most wrenching scenes shows him after he is kicked off the team, wearing gang colors and warning his former teammates with a meaningful glance to get away quickly.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about how the children helped Conor realize that he needed to make some changes. Why was it important that Conor made a rule that the players could not insult each other? What did Conor learn from G-Baby? What do you think will happen to the members of the team when they get too old to play in the league?
Movie Details
- In theaters : September 14, 2001
- On DVD or streaming : February 19, 2002
- Cast : D.B. Sweeney , Diane Lane , Keanu Reeves
- Director : Brian Robbins
- Inclusion Information : Female Movie Actor(s) , Asian Movie Actor(s) , Polynesian/Pacific Islander Movie Actor(s)
- Studio : Paramount Pictures
- Genre : Drama
- Run time : 106 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- MPAA explanation : thematic elements, language and some violence
- Last updated : September 21, 2019
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