vrijdag 25 oktober 2013

Trouble with the Curve (2012)

Genre : Drama/Sport
Country : USA

Cast :
Clint Eastwood : Gus
Amy Adams : Mickey
Justin Timberlake : Johnny
John Goodman : Pete Klein

Director :
Robert Lorenz

Summary
Gus is a baseball scout. The team he works for thinks he should retire. He asks them to let him do one more scouting job to prove himself. His friend, Pete, asks Gus's estranged daughter, Mickey, if she could go with him to make sure he's OK as his eyes are failing. The doctor tells Gus he should get his eyes treated but he insists on doing his scouting assignment, which takes him to North Carolina. Mickey decides to put her work on hold to go with him and she wants him to explain why he pushed her away. Whilst there he runs into Johnny, a scout from another team who was a promising player Gus once scouted. Johnny and Mickey take an interest in each other.

My opinion

What are you all staring at? I'm not a pole dancer.

Clint Eastwood (Gus) as a baseball scout. A moody old grump who seemingly only has eyes for baseball. He is getting older and his eyes are getting dramatically worse. So his best friend (nice guest star by John Goodman) asks Gus's daughter to assist her father. The new generation in the club where Gus is under contract, tries to relieve Gus. Matthew Lillard, of course, plays the role of the annoying smart ass. I don't know why, but this guy just has the charisma to put down such an annoying brat

Despite the enormous accumulation of cliches and predictable courses, this movie could hold my attention until the end and I found it an enjoyable movie to watch. The poor father-daughter relationship, which is actually the main subject in this film, is ofcourse fixed in the end. The pedantic nerd is obviously put in place and sacked. The lawyer who squeezed himself in a devious way in place of the daughter so he could lead a groundbreaking case, fails and the daughter finds her prince charming in the course of the story. So predictable, but for once not disturbing to me

Perhaps a sign of my good taste (Just kidding), but it was only at the end that I knew the other scout was Justin Timberlake. All in all, he delivered an excellent performance here and briefly the words "maybe a bit of acting talent" came to me. In this movie he was more convincing than in "In Time" and he's anyway more palatable than 50Cent in whatever movie. Amy Adams played the role of teenage daughter, who has more baseball knowledge than it would seem, and is also fun to look at. And Robert Patrick has the honor to interpret the most satisfying action throughout the film : sack the sneaky Philip.