There's an inherent danger in any movie director taking on a sports movie, and it's this: Very few directors know anything at all about the sport they're depicting, while the viewers they're courting know EVERYTHING about it.
That being a given, I am very impressed that this movie --- remember, it was made only a few years after talkies appeared --- has actual locations shots at L. A.'s Wrigley Field and St. Louis's Sportsmans Park (Busch Stadium #1).
Like a cop watching a crime movie and slapping his forehead going "That would never happen in real life", any true baseball fan will have his face-plant moments watching this....but give it a chance.
There's one gaffe so huge you could steer Elon Musk's ego through it: What should be the movie's most suspenseful scene, the denouement, instead is laugh-out-loud funny, in part due to a very poor choice of sound effect.
However, with today's pro sports being dangled like the Sword of Damocles's gambling industry from a single human hair of integrity, there are 2024 undercurrents presciently running through this 90-year old movie.
It was made not to be an Oscar nominee or Ebert's Great Movies entry, but just to be the final in a triplex at the corner movie theater, keeping summertime moviegoers buying popcorn and soda back when baseball was the national sport.
Set your expectations accordingly and you might enjoy it, especially when a baserunner is gunned down trying to score.
That being a given, I am very impressed that this movie --- remember, it was made only a few years after talkies appeared --- has actual locations shots at L. A.'s Wrigley Field and St. Louis's Sportsmans Park (Busch Stadium #1).
Like a cop watching a crime movie and slapping his forehead going "That would never happen in real life", any true baseball fan will have his face-plant moments watching this....but give it a chance.
There's one gaffe so huge you could steer Elon Musk's ego through it: What should be the movie's most suspenseful scene, the denouement, instead is laugh-out-loud funny, in part due to a very poor choice of sound effect.
However, with today's pro sports being dangled like the Sword of Damocles's gambling industry from a single human hair of integrity, there are 2024 undercurrents presciently running through this 90-year old movie.
It was made not to be an Oscar nominee or Ebert's Great Movies entry, but just to be the final in a triplex at the corner movie theater, keeping summertime moviegoers buying popcorn and soda back when baseball was the national sport.
Set your expectations accordingly and you might enjoy it, especially when a baserunner is gunned down trying to score.