Un sogno una vittoria

****

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Rachel Griffiths, and Angus T. Jones.

A science teacher in his late thirties decides to follow his dream...playing professional baseball. The team that he coaches makes a bet that if they win the championship, then he must try out for pro baseball. Well guess what happens? Yep, you guessed it. I can't exactly tell you the rest, but you'll love it.

The film has a lot of heart that keeps this movie going and going. Quaid portrays a wonderful performance as Jimmy Morris. Everyone else is perfect, and his is definitely on the top 10 of 2002. It's Oscar material all the way and deserves whatever it gets.

What's also good about this is that it can be a great movie with no bad language or anything. That's a sign of great writing.

Highly recommended to everyone, but very highly recommended to families.

My favorite films are those which are based on an interesting true story, and are well made. "The Rookie" fits that bill, and I rate it very highly. At first glance it appears to be about getting to play baseball. In fact, it is about making your dreams come true, and the power of friendship. Baseball just happens to be the subject matter. The first one-hour movie is about a 10-member high school team in West Texas that barely manages to win one game each year. It is about their coach inspiring them to become the district champs and go to the state tournament in 1999.

The second one-hour movie comes about from a "deal" the kids made with the coach. "If we win district, then you have to go to a tryout with a professional baseball team." They do, so he does. And to his and everyone else's surprise, his 85-mph fastball as a 20-year-old has become a 98-mph one as a 35-year-old. The films hints that it might have been divine intervention, a prayer to St Rita, the patron of the impossible. Might have been!!

Dennis Quaid is a bit older than 35, but he does a good job and is believable as science teacher, coach, and finally a surprised big-league pitcher in Arlington, Tx stadium, where he strikes out his very first big-league batter. The real Jim played two seasons, not particularly distinguished, but that point is way secondary. The journey, and the way he made it, with support from family and his baseball kids is what this film is all about.

The DVD is very nice, with a great picture and decent use of the 5.1 Dolby surround sound. Extras include footage of the real Jim, some original footage of his playing days, and his narration and re-enactment of his first trip to a big-league mound. Great stuff! Plus a few, moderately interesting deleted scenes explained by the director.

The Rookie is a wonderfully done underdog story, a film that easily wins us over and has us cheering in the protagonist's corner in the first act. Dennis Quaid plays Jimmy Morris, a blue blooded baseball fanatic who grew up with the game running in his blood and a bucket load of talent, but never the time to pursue it growing up. His working class father (Brian Cox) discourages that kind of ambitious and adopts a vaguely bitter worldview. And so he grows up, starts a family and the dream fades. His skill resurfaces when he coaches the town's high school baseball team. They take notice of his wildfire pitching arm, and make him a deal: if they win one championship, he takes a crack at the major leagues talent scout circuit. It's a pleasure watching an old dog like Quaid take a triumphant eleventh hour shot at success, and it makes for a fine film. Morris's fastball is a 90 plus mile an hour wunderkind and he is immediately drafted into the MLB despite his age. His family is overjoyed and he is filled with a new energy and love for life spurred on by his second chance at his passion. It's great stuff. Rachel Griffiths is solid as Jimmy's eternally supportive wife, Beth Grant is sweet as his mother and adorable Angus T. Jones makes good work of his doting son. It's Brian Cox who quietly steals the show as his father, a man soured by his own misplaced trajectory, who takes his damn time to come around and show some pride is his son. Cox is a deeply gifted pro who provides pools of gravity and anchors the film back on solid ground every time it veers towards excessive sentimentality. Especially his final, wrenching scene. A golden entry in the sports genre.

A fine story about following your dreams and actually taking a stab at Doing something about them when the chance strikes. Nothing was easy for Morris either-he had a family, job, job opps elsewheres, a mortgage, etc-it wasn't like he could just drop what he was doing and blithely hop on the greyhound to play AAA ball for 4 months. It took guts. I am glad that they showed his indecision, almost up 'til he got the callup to the majors.

I can remember seeing him pitch against the Red Sox(I think...), it was a great story. Though Morris actually looks more like John Kruk or a Mills Watson than Quaid-that's okay.

Quaid does a very good job playing the man, the teacher, coach and 'oldest rookie'.... As someone who is in the the same age group, I certainly can ID with his plight. You're not Quite too old to do what you had dreamed of as a kid, but it's getting there. You have to do it sooner than lator.

Believably told, nicely edited, paced, acted, good to see the familiar faces of the late Royce Applegate, Brian Cox and Rachel Griffiths here.

Good job all around, glad to see it hit.

*** outta ****...who woulda thought that the Tampa Devil Rays woulda been the subject of such a good movie early on?

Walt Disney's "The Rookie" is based on the story of Jim Morris, a former minor league picher who made one of the most amazing comebacks in sports history, ending an almost 10 year retirement and making his Major League debut in 1999 at the age of 35.

The film opens with a brief synopsis of Morris' childhood, which included a series of re-locations - his father was a military man. And even when his family settled for good in football crazed Texas, Morris' passion for baseball remained strong.

The childhood segment then jumps ahead about 23 years to the adult Morris (played by Dennis Quaid) who is now a baseball coach and chemistry teacher at Big Lake High School (in real life it was Reagan County High School in Big Lake, Texas). It is mentioned that he attempted a career as a baseball player but that it didn't work out.

Morris's team is struggling and he lectures them about giving up on their dreams. They turn the table on him, telling him that he should try out for a Major League team. At several times when he pitches to them in practice, they express amazement at the speed with which he throws. Morris seems unconvinced but agrees to a deal with his players in which if they win district, he will try out for a Major League team.

Big Lake does win district and, adhering to his end of the deal, Morris attends a Tampa Bay Devil Rays try out. Phenomenally, he throws 98 miles an hour - faster than he threw during his minor league career and an outstanding speed even for a Major League pitcher. After another try out with the team, Morris is offered a contract with the Devil Rays.

This leaves him with a tough decision - stay in his comfortable life or once again pursue his Major League dream by going through the minor league grind of making little money and spending months at a time away from home. And the decision is even more agonizing than during his first minor league stint because he now has a wife and three children.

Morris signs with the Devil Rays, begins at the AA level and moves up quickly to the AAA level, one level below Major League Baseball. But as the season winds down, the chances of him getting "called up" grow increasingly slim.

For the most part, I love this movie. There are lots of great performances and likable characters and it's easy to find yourself really pulling for Morris. Also, the movie does a great job portraying professional baseball at both the major and minor league levels. And most of all, it teaches the timeless message of holding tight to your dreams even when they seem distant and almost impossible to achieve.

Still, the movie has some flaws. While generally accurate, it exaggerates and even fabricates a few things. Check out http://espn.go.com/page2/s/closer/020410.html for some examples. Also, except for one scene in which he prays with his players, the movie completely ignores Morris' Christian faith. But considering Disney's left wing zeal, that's not surprising.

Presumably, a lot of the exaggerations/fabrications were done to make the story more dramatic. Yet the 20 minute documentary on Morris that is included on the DVD features some information that makes his story more dramatic but is excluded from the movie.

For example, from birth until his family settled in Texas for good when he was 12, Morris re-located 14 times. And his initial minor league career ended after four surgeries through which he lost half of the muscle in his left (pitching) shoulder, thus making his throwing 98 mph even more inexplicable.

To fully appreciate and understand the story of Jim Morris, it's good to not only watch "The Rookie" but to watch the DVD's documentary, check out the aforementioned link to the movie's inaccuracies and probably also to read Morris' biography, also titled "The Rookie." I haven't read the book but I hope to one of these days.

But overall, "The Rookie" is a very good portrayal of a miraculous story and is a powerful testament to the power of dreams and the triumph of the common man. 8/10