You Gotta Believe

6.8 stars.

This is the story of a coach and his best friend coaching a team of little leaguers in Texas. They are about the worst team around. The coach gets sick. The kids get inspired, they drastically improve and make it to the 2002 Little League World Series. It's quite an inspiring story albeit somewhat misleading.

The film portrays the boys as scrawny, weak and terrible players, but if you look at some of the actual footage, they were average to above average sized, and actually quite good. This is not a bad news bears story. I think the Director wanted to make it appear that way to make the impression of them being underdogs. This is for obvious reasons in the movie biz.

This film is slightly inspired, but only average for entertainment and impact.

I never knew this was a true story until I read a few reviews here. The fact it was a true story inspired me watching. The only part I knew that was true is that this was a real little league team I didn't know about the father at all.

Now the set up for this team being a bunch of bodies who were just bad at baseball, I don't know If it is true. It was nice seeing that the team came together even though honestly that just wasn't well played out in the script. It kind of just happened.

They start playoffs and they literally showed us literally literally literally nothing after their first game until they're magically in the World Series. That's a really lame script. That is really really lame.

You know I wanna see how the kids felt and acted after their first game or any other game up until the World Series. They showed us nothing.

It's only good because the story of a bunch of nobodies making the World Series and watching the effect that dad has on them is inspiring. But the script was really, really poorly played out.

The message of a young team rallying behind a powerful emotional cause that pushes them beyond what they think is possible is always one that I will be drawn to and interested in. The fact that it's a true story makes it very tragic.

However, the film does not at all do such a true story justice. The script is extremely poor and the characters take a long time to connect with. The idea is that the team is supposed to be a really bad baseball team and has no hope at all as a fill in team for a spot in the Little League World Series. There's brief moments of them practicing but we aren't really shown the evolution of the kids as players or really how they've matured as individuals while dealing with the personal matters the one family faces on the team. Yes , they do say lines that suggest they have matured, but without actually seeing it play out much ourselves it feels like the lines are forced in to make the plot work.

There are also many confusing lines along the way that distract or take away from the main message of the movie. In particular the friendship between the coach's feels odd. I'm not sure if it's cast selection or the acting quality. In general the head coach who is an attorney seems to get more screen time than is warranted.

Overall , it's a touching story but maybe a book would have been a better format to tell the story so that people can appreciate the details better.

It's 2002. Bobby Ratliff (Luke Wilson) and Jon Kelly (Greg Kinnear) are coaches of a terrible Little League team in Texas. When nobody else wants to compete, they are asked to participate in a game which leads all the way to the Little League World Series.

This is based on a true story and that may be part of the problem. The true story requires the movie to center on Bobby Ratliff's ordeal whereas it is desperately trying to be The New Bad News Bears. They just need to get that girl pitcher. The kids are not able to distinguish themselves. It's the name Rocket, glasses, and skirt chaser. To be clear, that's all I truly remember from the three main kids. Don't even mention the rest of the team. This needs to be their movie, but it is not completely that. Ultimately, it is a problem that cannot be overcome.

I wasn't expecting much when I went to see this movie, based on its trailers. Yet even with those low expectations, I quickly found myself bored and disappointed. My five star rating is probably being generous. The film had poor writing, poor camerawork and editing, and overall was very predictable. When the worst parts of a baseball movie are its baseball action scenes on the diamond, there is something wrong. If you combined aspects of "The Bad News Bears" with "Facing the Giants", this film might be the result. It is certainly aimed at more of a family audience, though probably more to older elementary and middle school-aged kids, due to a serious medical topic faced.