O Pancada

Really The Scout is a sort of dumb comedy, but that can be good. It is rather silly and that is the point. It's plot is implausible. The plot twists are odd and somewhat predictable. But I liked it and watched it more than once. So don't write it off because it doesn't fall into what the ideal of a baseball movie should be. If you write it off do it because it does not live up to its cheesy comedy roots, and frankly it odes that. If I had a VCR here I'd be running out to the Blockbuster now.

This is an endearing comedy which, as a Brit who knows precious little about baseball, I enjoyed a lot. The main reason is the performance of Brendan Fraser as the emotionally immature prodigy, Steve Nebraska. There are elements of his later role as George Of The Jungle here, although George was never this vulnerable or unpredictable. Dianne Wiest makes for a sympathetic psychiatrist and Albert Brooks is an affable rogue of a talent scout.

The Scout is one of those sports movies that gets it right in enough ways to make it watchable, but gets it wrong enough to make you cringe in more spots than you'd like. Brendan Fraser is really terrific as the dopey, wide-eyed innocent of a pitcher who becomes the subject of a massive game of tug of war at first between teams to see who signs him, and then between his love of baseball and his fear of failure. His career has flourished thanks to roles like this, the downy innocent amid a swamp of leaches. This part of the movie is really good. The huge, over-exaggerated bidding war between baseball clubs for his service, it all is real enough to be familiar, and satirical enough to really make fun of and kind of predict baseball's current situation, in which money has become more and more the driving force behind the game. The movie also has a bevvie of terrific cameos like Bret Saberhagen, Keith Hernandez, who oddly seem mistcast as Mets stars in a movie that circles around the Yankees, and of course, a small but prominant role for Yankee owner George Steinbrenner. But in the end all of this winds into a ridiculous debut outing in the first game of the World Series. Let's start with the fact that you can't just join the roster in the World Series. It doesn't work that way. No matter how touted you are, no team will carry a pitcher on their post-season roster (and no, if you're not on that roster the whole way, you cannot join it) who won't pitch unless you get the Series. It doesn't work that way. And his 81 pitch, 81 strike perfect game is ludicrous. I mean completely preposterous. This is a movie that gets so much right in its satire of the game's economics (the Yankees winning the bidding war here is a nice little nod to the current situation where the Yankees are hated throughout the baseball world for their tossing around of money as if it were the fake paper stuff you get with a Monopoly board) and gets so much wrong in the baseball sense. In how good Steve Nebraska (Fraser) is, all sense of realism is throw horribly out the window, and the movie becomes little more than a silly baseball movie. As a Yankee fan, and a fan of the game itself, i expect better of a baseball movie.

I like good baseball movies - the Natural, Field of Dreams, the Sandlot, Pride of the Yankees, etc. But I hate this movie because I can't tell if this is supposed to be a comedy or a drama. It seems like neither. Also, the baseball scout, played by Albert Brooks, seems more out of touch with reality than the troubled Brendan Fraser character. I can't stand Brooks in this movie. i am usually more of a glass-half-full type of person when I evaluate movies, but I can't believe some of the favorable comments for The Scout. You have to be kidding? I can't believe that Bob Costas and Tim McCarver, both with well-respected baseball reputations, would agree to be part of the absurd ending. I know it's a movie, but as someone who loves baseball, the final scene is a complete insult to the game...and the movie business.

BRENDAN FRASER seems to specialize in playing dumb--or at least that's the impression I had after watching him emote as a child-like baseball player who happens to have a great pitching arm in THE SCOUT. He does get laughs with his dumb act, so I suppose that's why he was chosen for this particular role.

But most of the laughs come from the fact that ALBERT BROOKS is his co-star, a man who can say a funny line without ever giving a hint that he thinks it's funny. And sometimes, the result is hilarious--particularly in the "knife" scene in which Brooks is trying to hide all his kitchen knives from Fraser who "wants to cut something".

None of the humor is particularly subtle, but DIANNE WIEST is a welcome addition as Dr. Aarons, the psychiatrist who determines that Fraser might have his dangerous moments after subjecting him to a series of tests with photos. But the baseball scenes at the finish are too over-the-top, straining credulity to the limits.

The Tony Bennett nightclub sequence is also guaranteed to have you squirming in discomfort as Fraser sings an off-key version of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco", much to Bennett's chagrin.

Summing up: With a wittier script and a different approach, could have been a very winning comedy.