Movie Review: "Trouble With The Curve"

"Trouble With The Curve": B-.  The last two movies I saw starring Clint Eastwood were Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino.  In the former he plays a crotchety old boxing manager.  In the latter he plays a crotchety old war veteran.  In his new movie, Trouble With The Curve, which made its Twin Cities debut yesterday, Eastwood plays a crotchety old professional baseball scout, Gus Lobel.  In real life, Eastwood is 82 years old.  If he were actually a baseball scout instead of an actor, I'd guess he would be almost an exact replica of Gus.  It makes one ponder this question:  If you are playing a character who is more or less yourself, is it really acting?  Eastwood has been around Hollywood long enough to have earned the right to play whatever characters he wants.  Judging by his last three movies, he chooses to play Clint Eastwood.

Gus is an old school scout for the Atlanta Braves.  There are only three months left to go until his employment contract expires, but he has no intention of retiring.  Baseball is his life.  His territory includes Georgia and the Carolinas.  He doesn't believe scouting a player by researching voluminous statistical data on a computer can take the place of seeing a prospect in person.  One of the other Braves' scouts, a younger know-it-all named Phillip (Matthew Lillard), scoffs at Gus' obsolete methods.  Truth be told, Gus probably would not even know how to turn on a computer.  Instead, he drives himself to amateur games in his rusted out car, and relies on the sounds of the ball hitting the mitt or the bat to determine a prospect's worth.  His auditory senses are acute to compensate for his rapidly failing eyesight.   

There is a fair share of baseball in Trouble With The Curve, but this is really more of a father-daughter movie.  Gus' 33 year old daughter, Mickey (Amy Adams), is a senior associate with a large Atlanta law firm.  Mickey is named after Yankee Hall Of Famer Mickey Mantle, Gus' favorite player.  She is up for partnership, but must first win the proverbial big case before the firm's partnership committee, a small group of middle-aged white guys, makes the decision whether to promote her or a male colleague, Neil (Clifton Guterman).  Just as Mickey is in the throes of preparing for a huge presentation to an important client, she gets a visit from the Braves' scouting director, Pete Klein (the always solid John Goodman).  Pete is Gus' boss in the team's chain of command, but moreso he is Gus' personal friend going back over thirty years.  He has known Mickey forever.  He tells Mickey that the Braves have the second pick in the upcoming draft and they are real interested in a kid named Bo Gentry who is playing amateur ball in North Carolina.  Gus' job will be on the line if he makes the wrong recommendation on whether to pick Gentry.  Pete suggests to Mickey that, because of Gus' macular degeneration, she should go to North Carolina to help her father scout Gentry.  Mickey rejects Pete's entreaty, but as we know from the trailers we have seen, she changes her mind and surprises her father at the Carolina field.  Her prospects for partnership are now in jeopardy.  She has prioritized her father's situation over her professional obligations, although she assures her firm's partners that she won't let them down.

While they are in North Carolina Mickey tries a few times to have a heart-to-heart talk with her dad, but he always cuts it short.  She wants to get some answers from her father about how he raised her and some decisions he made following her mother's death when Mickey was six years old.  Gus does not want Mickey there in the first place, even though she knows as much about baseball as anybody, thanks to Gus.  He certainly isn't interested in digging up the past.  Meanwhile, a young scout named Johnny (Justin Timberlake) arrives on the scene to take a look at Gentry.  Johnny is a former pitcher originally signed by Gus for the Braves several years before.  Johnny developed arm trouble and eventually was traded to the Red Sox over Gus' objections.  Johnny's career was cut short due to that injury, and now he is a Red Sox scout.  Would you believe he is just about Mickey's age?

Will Gus make the right decision about whether to draft Gentry?  Will Mickey get the answers she is seeking from her father?  Will Johnny and Mickey end up as more than new friends who like to challenge each other with baseball trivia?  Will Mickey make partner?

Trouble With The Curve is too cheesy and predictable to be considered a top notch baseball flick.  Bull Durham is far and away the gold standard for that genre.  The best parts of Trouble are the one line expletives uttered by Gus and his beyond-hope style of housekeeping, which includes stacks of sports pages all over his house and his inability to do something as simple as flipping a burger over the stove or backing his beater out of his garage.  Amy Adams is miscast as Mickey.  I might be able to see her as a big firm lawyer, but she doesn't have a tomboy bone in her body, a characteristic called for in the role.  The characters of Neil (her fellow senior associate), Phillip (the know-it-all scout) and Bo Gentry (the hot amateur prospect) are one-dimensional horses' asses.  The other guys on Gentry's team look like they should be playing chess instead of baseball.  Pee-wee Herman must have been unavailable when the casting call went out.

Near the end of the movie there is a scene involving a pitcher's mound which just happens to be situated on the lawn next to the Carolina motel where Mickey is staying.  How many motels have you stayed in where the accoutrements included a pitcher's mound?  In order for the movie to have its over-the-top contrived happy ending, with nary a loose end, the motel pitcher's mound was necessary.  I am surprised the story did not end with the Braves winning the World Series.