The Final Season

The story of a small town high school baseball team in the school's last year. The school, against the wishes of the towns people will be closed and the students transferred to another town's larger school. Sean Austin looking and acting like Vic Morrow has to pull together the depressed, fragmented team. The whole cast contributes. The focus is on the baseball team but it gives a nice picture of life in a small farming community. Tom Arnold is really effective in a small role. This shows what can be done with a small budget and no special effects. I will definitely buy this when it comes out on DVD.

The movie has the climax in the big state championship game. The fact that a town with 500+ people could have a high school state champion baseball team once is something but this one had 19. The opposing teams pitcher was unbeaten in the regular season. The person playing the pitcher was excellent. He just had one line but the expressions and body language was very effective. I liked it quite a lot.

I am sorry to say that I never saw this advertised and I think there was 3 other people in theater. The only reason I saw it was because I had a free pass and the movies I really wanted to see weren't accepting passes yet. After the movie I felt like going back and giving them the $8. It's a good movie but due to either no big stars or no money for advertising most people will never hear of it.

Until I saw this movie, I thought inspirational sports movies were easy to make, but this movie made it seem otherwise. I was expecting more from a movie with such a good cast, but even they couldn't save this movie from destruction.

The main thing that ruined the movie was the screenplay. The story itself was inspirational but the sequence of events and the actual writing took that story and chopped it up into pieces. It almost seemed as though the writer had gone around to the people involved in the actual story and written down exactly what they said presented as a screenplay, not bothering to smooth and connect events.

Attempting to include everyone in the story, the character development was also lacking. One minute Mitch(Michael Angarano) was the mean outcast, and the next he was a mannerly star on the baseball team. It was too short of a period in the movie for the change to be believable.

Worse than the screenplay and bad character development was the score. Not one moment was the movie devoid of cheesy "inspirational" music. It is okay to use at the climax or a dramatic moment in the movie, but when it is played throughout the movie relentlessly, it loses its impact. It made the movie a joke. The movie would have been better off with no music at all. It ruined any and all touching scenes.

The only reason I give this movie a 6/10 is because through all of the mistakes, there was a fire lit in the viewer that wanted to fight for this small town team and see them succeed.

This is a Great Baseball Movie, and all peoples who have the sport of Baseball in their blood will love this film.

Passion, friendship, loyalty, family , all we have in this movie, but specially, a good feeling about baseball, the favorite pass time of all us.

I'm from Dominican Republic, where we live the baseball, and we are proud to have ball players like Albert Pujols, Pedro Martinez, Alex Rodriguez, Vladimir Guerrero, Sammy Sosa and others in the MLB, and like i said, we live the feeling and the passion of baseball.. Baseball it's so important to us, and with this movie, we can know the importance of something like that in a town and in our Life.

Baseball for much of us , the baseball fans, it's not only a sport, it's more than that, it's passion, it's feeling, It's Proud...

The movie have a very good acting and good script..

Playball!.....

What I find tired and Cliché' about all this is the critics response. Though not necessarily an Oscar film, the movie is enjoyable and though obviously some of the story was embellished, the things that they would say are cliché' actually happened. The reviewer posted in the IMDb page calls it a rub in Iowa's face. As an Iowan, I didn't feel that way. It does however point out the idiocy of allowing politicians be in control of education and schools, they always seem to think Money = good education, sports is a big part of the education process and obviously this was not a good choice for a town that loves its baseball. Sorry but I don't share the opinion that this pleads the death of underdog films. It points out an Amazing accomplishment, against all the odds and that is exactly the attraction of underdog films... Unfortunately it seems that there was a lack of good planning on the promoting/advertising of the film.

"The Final Season" is a good respite from the usual Hollywood fare of action/violence, bad comedy, super heroes, mobsters, commercialism, and endless sexual innuendo. Yeah, it might be a little hokey or sentimental, but this seems pretty insignificant given the movie's restraint and its quietly low key approach to life in rural Iowa.

One thing for sure, Norway High School's baseball team, representing a town of 500 people, which won 20 1A class championships over period of about 30 years, and sent several players to the majors, does deserve a big time movie. "The Final Season" covers the final two years of the high school's existence, the team's last hurrah, and town's substantial loss.

Above all, it emphasizes Norway's incredible baseball players, played very convincingly by real teenage athletes, who not only truly look the part, but can play the game. Their infielders are nothing short of modern dancers--and almost as bony. Michael Angarano who plays Mitch Akers is a real standout, moving and original--but so in a way, is the team itself, and their two unpretentious coaches (one of historic dimension).

The school merger theme is also effective. The rousing school board meetings, the reliable relationships, the bonds between coaches and fans, the old homogeneous way of life, are all palpable to the viewer. And as the film goes on and democracy wanes so the collateral damage of NHS's demise becomes apparent in the disposability of the town, its culture & traditions, and most of all in its famed ball players and coaches.