Gentleman Babe

There are really only two ways John Goodman could ever fit into a sports movie: a) he's not the lead or b) it's about fishing. I'm nowhere near an authority on the real Babe Ruth, but I reckon a baseball legend could probably run five yards without being completely out of breath. Don't get me wrong, Goodman is excellent in the non-baseball scenes, but whenever he gets on that plate it's really embarrassing and highly unconvincing. Was this movie made on a dare? Did the studio just think John Goodman needed some exercise? It's pretty painful to watch all in all, but you can't look away. And yet...in a way it's also indescribably entertaining, even though that's probably just my dark side enjoying the "run fatty run"-aspect of this film. It also helps a lot that, as I already implied, the parts about Ruth's personal life are well-acted and in fact much more interesting than the repetitive homerun-homerun-homerun-homerun-homerun-homerun-homerun scenes. "The Babe" is a decent biopic, but you never really believe you're watching Babe Ruth. Oh well, at least it's easy to sit through.

While I enjoyed the movie and John Goodman's performance, The Babe's weight was never near that of John and made him look like a lumbering athlete, which in fact he was not. While the Babe was not a role model, he was truly a hero ............. then and now.

He did not make the comments about Lou Gehrig shown in the movie. His problem with Lou Gehrig had to do with a party his wife went to ahead of the when Lou got to the party and Gehrig was upset his wife might have been intimate with The Babe, which is doubtful. Ruth and Gehrig had been close friends until Lou got jealous.

The Babe was not a bumbler on the ball field, only in life, due to his lack of class, which was caused by the lack of a loving family. He did have a great care for children, due his lack of having that during his upbringing. It was a good movie in terms of many things, but left those who have read the read biographies of The Babe, disappointed with how the so called facts were presented. The Babe will live on long after this movie, which I avoided for many years, due to figuring it was tainted ............. and it was, very tainted. I do have to say I still enjoyed most of the movie. Like many biographies to much poetic license was taken.

Back in 1948 when Babe Ruth was dying of cancer a small independent film The Babe Ruth Story came out with William Bendix as the star. It was based on Babe's own G rated memoirs with the same title ghost written by Bob Considine and ghost ghost written by Fred Lieb. It was how I'm sure Ruth wanted to be remembered. But even people knew then the facts said otherwise.

John Goodman in the title role of The Babe is a lot closer to the swaggering hedonist who was just a kid at heart who never out grew his childhood. Abandoned and left to the care of the Christian brothers at St. Mary's Industrial School in Baltimore, the over-sized trouble-making youth was saved from probably a criminal existence by the way he could both hit and pitch a baseball. One of the many things forgotten was how good a pitcher he was and the crucial decision made by Ed Barrow his manager at the Red Sox to put Babe exclusively in the outfield to keep his bat in the lineup every day. When Ruth left for the Yankees, Barrow followed him and he's not even a character in this film.

So much in this television film is left out and just plain made up. Third baseman Joe Dugan was Ruth's teammate on the Yankees, never the Red Sox as in this film. Played by Bruce Boxleitner he was not especially close to Ruth, as close to him as any of his other teammates which was not. The Babe partied hearty with them, but was not a soulmate per se.

Trini Alvarado and Kelly McGillis play his first and second wives and their portrayals ring true. Wife number one Helen Wofford was just a nice kid from the country who liked country life and Ruth was a city boy all the way. Claire Hodgson Ruth was a showgirl and a very shrewd manager of the money the free spending Babe liked to shovel out as fast as he made it. She also managed the image we have of him for the rest of her life.

Colonel Jacob Ruppert is done a terrible disservice in this film. To me Colonel Ruppert was the ideal owner of a sports team, in fact baseball and sports in general would be better with more Rupperts running things than Steinbrenners. Ruth got it in his head he wanted to manage, I think because contemporary stars like Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, and Rogers Hornsby all got to manage. Ruppert was quite right and we saw a whole film showing how much Ruth couldn't manage himself. It never happened that Claire Ruth slapped Ruppert, NOBODY did that to him. But she knew better than anyone how much the Babe couldn't manage himself and she was not going in the dugout with him.

Some good acting featured in The Babe. But it contains way too many inaccuracies for a higher rating.

John Goodman steamrolls his way through this film, with just about everyone else pushed into the background.

Purists no doubt will cane this film for historical inaccuracies. Heck, I'm from another country and know jack about baseball, but 15 minutes on the Internet was enough to show me that the film took serious short-cuts with Babe's life and career, not to mention a number of errors and distortions of fact.

Does this matter? Well, yes, probably. But you have to feel for the filmmakers. How do you condense a 20-year sporting career, not to mention a study of a complex and flawed individual, into a couple of hours of cinema? It's not easy, and the film suffers from events that are merely touched on Example 1: Ruth is introduced to mobsters in a speakeasy, but this seems to lead nowhere. The obvious question is: what happened next?. Example 2: The conflict between Ruth and Lou Gehrig is not portrayed accurately, and its resolution is not shown at all.

An excess of sentiment also hurts the film. There are moments that look like cliched scenes from countless other sporting movies - especially the sick kiddie in hospital extracting a promise of 2 home runs from Ruth, who dutifully delivers, and the same kiddie, now fully recovered and grown up, showing up at Ruth's swansong. It's emotionally manipulative film-making and I regret to say it works, but it also pulls this film back from greatness.

All up, just above average, unlike its subject matter.

"The Babe" was a wonderful film. If critics want to nitpick it by commenting on the "authenticity" of the film like saying that all the games were played on the same field just re-organized, and making negative comments about about the film portraying the "dark side" of Babe Ruth, etc, I guess that's fine, but give the film what it deserves. First of all, John Goodman did an amazing job.

The truth is that Babe was a very confused person. He is probably baseball's greatest legend, but he did have some serious problems with women and alcohol. His childhood was a mess in many ways. He didn't know how to be married or to be a Father to a child. Everyone has issues. Accept the documented facts that he was not an angel. He had a huge heart and loved to do things for people. He also had his own demons to overcome and most of us do. I know that the film added a few things that may or may not have happened and I know that many things were left out, but unfortunately this is the way it has to be in ALL films like this. There is NO way to capture every single thing that the Babe ever did in less than 2 hours. They just have to do the best job they can with the time they have to work with.

This film was genuinely uplifting and to all who only saw the negative side of this film, shame on you. John Goodman is a huge Babe fan and even he felt that this was an acurate portrayal of the Bambino. The film is inspiring, positive for the most part and it's made me feel good every time I've seen it.