Eephus

As a lover of baseball, I was really interested to see what a new hardball flick (there being less and less of those these days) might bring to the table. Alas, I found Eephus more boring than the poignant emotion it was going for.

For a very basic overview, Eephus tells the story of a men's rec league baseball game on their beloved small-town field--which is about to be torn down for a new school to spring forth on its grounds. Through players leaving, a lack of baseballs & umpires (and talent, generally), and the encroaching darkness, the final game stretches far longer than anyone anticipates.

I clearly see what Eephus is trying to accomplish--a sort of minimalist commentary on the sport and camaraderie of baseball at a local level. One character says something to the extent that baseball is like "waiting for something to happen--and then it's over" and while that is a fun metaphor it doesn't work as the basis of a feature film.

Instead, Eephus is mostly boring and lacking any of the necessary plot or character development that could have made it interesting. A cardinal sin is that it features far too many characters to ever really let attachments form. This whole flick should have been about the uniqueness or outright oddity of grown men playing a kid's game in their spare time, but director Carson Lund never quite gets it there because there are just too many players and their "backstories" are either too droll or too brief to make much of an impact.

Eephus seems like a film that was entirely built around the "baseball is boring" criticism often lobbed that sport's way. So, the filmmakers here try to "get inside" that tedium and make an interesting film. But, at least for me, it (somewhat ironically) ended up exactly that: boring.

Truth be told, I am rarely truly bored by any film. I can usually find something to hold my interest. But with Eephus, I found myself checking "how much was left" on more than one occasion because everything is so sparse within its construction.

A charming, memorable cast makes this movie special. Every actor gets his time at bat, and by the end of the movie I was amazed how well I knew and understood these characters. The small town charm and loving tribute to the passing of time and legacies contribute to a story that pulls you in. I can't say it's an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but you will still care every time a character steps up to the plate (literally and figuratively). In many ways the movie reminded me of a David Mamet play. I was also impressed by the cinematography; the final 15 minutes of the movie are a technical marvel of lighting and camerawork. Overall an excellent film!

Movies storyline was great! Good to get a new perspective for a baseball movie It wasn't just a dream story. Background music was a little dramatic at some point, but overall a great entertaining movie showing something more realistic than the average baseball movie. Says minimum required characters were not met so filling in the extra characters with this. There should not be a minimum character amount. Or at least it should be lowered because this is a lot of writing. I don't know why there's a minimum character amount. Maybe someone should tell me I would definitely recommend the movie for everyone.

This is bound to be an unpopular opinion, but, to me, fewer things in life are more boring than baseball - except perhaps for movies about baseball (with a few exceptions like "The Natural" (1984), "A League of Their Own" (1992) and "42" (2013)). And that foregoing assessment, in my view, is more than applicable to this positively dreadful debut feature from writer-director Carson Lund. This alleged comedy tells the story of two men's recreational baseball teams in a small Massachusetts town who embark on playing the last-ever game to be held at a local ballpark that's about to be torn down to make room for construction of a new school. The implausibly overlong matchup, brought about by a series of completely unfunny incidents that stretch out the length of the game, goes on from midday through the afternoon and into the crisp, chilly fall evening wherein the players try to continue competing in the dark (gee, now there's a load of laughs for you). There are also numerous talky, uninteresting conversations among the players in the dugout, along with views from the sidelines, where a handful of passing spectators offer their observations about what's transpiring on the field. These sequences do little to add to the film and serve only to pad an already-tedious narrative. The sad part in all this is that the premise truly had the potential to make for a fun and heartwarming picture. Unfortunately, though, the absolutely flat dialogue, lame plot elements and undercooked character development prevent that from materializing. While this offering admittedly features some impressive cinematography and a well-conceived production design, there's not much else to commend here. That is, of course, unless one compliments the creators on their fitting choice of title for the film: An "eephus," for those who aren't aware of what it is, is the name for an obscure form of curveball, one that's thrown deceptively slowly, almost to the point where it lulls the batter into a sense of mesmerized complacency, as if to put the hitter to sleep. And, on that score, the filmmaker has truly succeeded in crafting a picture that lives up to its namesake where audiences are concerned. All I can say is that I'm truly glad that I didn't pay box office ticket prices to see this one.

Let's face it, most of us live lives that don't add up to much in the grand scheme of things. But we can still construct a meaningful life, if we act with integrity and see things through.

That's what I see as the main idea being explored in this movie about a New England small-town adult rec-league baseball game. The game is "meaningless" according to standard criteria. It's a make-up game being played in mid-October between two middling teams that aren't contending for the league championship. Most of the players are middle-aged men without any particular talent.

But it's also the last game that will ever be played in this league, because the field is scheduled to be paved over to build a new school. The players understand that a part of their lives is about to end, and accordingly they invest the game with a sense of purpose. There are umpires, concessions, and even an official scorer. When light starts to fade and the score is tied, the teams refuse to quit, using their car headlights to keep playing until there is a resolution.

My description sounds heavy and the movie could have easily been preachy or cliched, but the filmmakers convey their ideas in a low key, shambolic way, with lots of understated humor and random moments of grace.