Major League: Back to the Minors

Silly film about a minor league owner and manager who prepare their team of underdogs for a confrontation with formidable opponents. Awful performances and a weak story tarnish the image of the original 1989 comedy. Uecker tries hard for the laughs, but even he's run out of steam.

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.

I don't remember if this was released in the theaters or just made straight to DVD, but it's the 2nd level of production. Watchable but forgettable, and I don't mean that as an insult to the film, cause it's not as bad as everyone says.

Scott Bakula with his easy going, genuine style carries the movie. Most of the team is forgettable but not annoying and there are some moments of humor in there. Corbin Bernsen has a very small role as the GM, where he's not comic relief this time, as he was in the first 2 movies, but he's a nice guy running a bad ball-club. Ted McGinley is at his best as the arrogant teams manager and he's a perfect Yin to Bakula's Yang.

I wasn't a fan of Major League 2, which lacked the freshness and charm of Major League 1 (though I loved the White Lightning/Black Thunder scene). This one went down a different path leaving the major league team behind and looking at it from the minors and for me it worked, but, it's not a film to go into with high expectations. Another poster he called it "a solid single" and while Major League 1 was a home-run and Major League 2 was disappointing by comparison, this one, we don't expect much so it's OK. 6 stars. 7 if you're dying for a baseball movie and there's one you haven't seen. It's not awful and don't believe the 4.5 ranking. It's better than that, just, not much better.

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.

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.