Zweite Liga - Die Indianer von Cleveland sind zurück

Perhaps not the big names as the first two installments of the series, but an enjoyable movie that teaches that you don't have to be biggest or the best, as long as you give it all you've got and have fun. Scott Backula gives a great and convincing performance as a minor league coach, Ted McGinley does what he does best, play a self centered egotistical, overbearing idiot. He has been brilliant with the same type character in vehicles like "Married With Children." Who else could have pulled this character off. This movie delves into some of the situations faced by both major and minor league players. There are good players who spend their entire baseball careers in minor league. In the days we live in of multimillion contracts, and players who think they are gods, it might be better to see men who play the sport more for fun than money. Perhaps if some of the Major League stars in real life would learn to have fun playing, then we as fans would get a better game.

I got the feeling when I watched this that someone had written a nice script about minor league baseball, and somebody got a hold of it and said, "Hey, let's just make this a 'Major League' movie!" I got the feeling the characters from the previous two movies were just tacked onto the existing story line. Which is bad, because there were some good things in this, like the old (actually, ancient) minor league outfielder who was converted to first. And the young phenom hitter.

Not Bull Durham, but could have been good.

Gus Cantrell is a major league pitcher in the twilight of his career. He contacted by Roger Dorn, General Manager of the Minnesota Twins, and offered the role of managing the Buzz, the Twins' AAA team. Cantrell accepts but regrets it almost immediately. The Buzz is a dysfunctional no-hoper team, with an odd assortment of characters. However, Cantrell quickly sets about forging them into a winning team.

My expectations for this, the third installment of Major League, were quite low. The first Major League was great but Major League II was very disappointing, filled with clichés, cheap humour and unrealistic baseball. Back to the Minors initially promised to be more of the same, looking quite unoriginal and predictable.

However, it grows on you and its charms become more apparent with time. The key is that it is set in the Minor Leagues, so instead of the glamour of major league baseball, we have no-frills, small town, salt-of-the-earth baseball. It makes a refreshing change and does help the engagement factor.

This all said, it is still fairly predictable and the humour hit- and-miss, but the baseball is fairly realistic, certainly more realistic than Major League II.

Overall, okay, not brilliant, but better than Major League II, at least.

This film did nothing to help carry on the success that Major League's I & II started. As a matter of fact they didn't mention the Cleveland Indians once during the whole film. What happened to the "Comeback Kids"? Did they finally win the World Series or did they just give up? I understand that the story was about a minor league team but come on. What was their motive for winning? I hope it wasn't to see if they could beat the Minnesota Twins ( the way those guys are playing now anybody can beat them ). After they finished their season in first place did they go on to the championship or did they just go to Disneyland like everyone else? The only highlights of the film was seeing Pedro Cerano and Tanaka return to baseball ( although it was a bit cheesy learning how they quit the majors only to return to the minor league later on ). Bob Uecker was great as always (did he get fired as the Indians head announcer?). I hope that if a fourth one is on the horizon that it is not a repeat of this awful season.

Yet another team of castaways led to improbable victory by a troubled coach who discovers himself in the process.

The only novelty here is the drama of the announcers. More energy was expended on their dialog than on anything else, with all the rest of the story is automatic. But this is actually done well. The first problem in drama is how to place the viewer. The oldest trick is also the most effective: create a chorus to stand as surrogate and leader for the viewer. A distance from the action is established, but since it is within the play, that distance is vastly less than between the screen and me in my seat.

So here we have a screenwriter working to put new life into a tired cliche. Probably it is not enough, but it is interesting to watch the struggle.