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Reviews
A League of Their Own (2022)
Bad writing, bad acting and not enough baseball scenes
I made it to S1E6 before giving up completely on the show. I tried really hard to like it. But in the end, too many things about it frustrated me to the point I decided that I'd had enough of watching it.
I think the storyline went over the top in promoting lesbian relationships. I don't have a problem with seeing lesbian stories. But when the show is supposed to be a fictitious account of a pro women's baseball league that really did exist after WWII...I expect the fiction to at least sell me on it being even "possibly realistic". The writers failed miserably in making that happen though. It's to be expected that at least some female pro athletes will be lesbian or bisexual. Therefore, it should be expected that at least some of the characters would explore that lifestyle when not on the field. But as the show progressed, it began to seem as if literally the entire team of Peaches was closeted lesbians - even the ones who initially came across as being homophobic. So, I can buy the idea of some of the characters having that kind of lifestyle...but not most or all of the entire team, as it at least seemed in the later episodes that I watched. Unfortunately, 1940's America really was a lot more ignorant and discriminatory, in general, than 2020's America is. The writers could have even taken advantage of that by writing in more dramatic scenes depicting characters who might be more clearly heterosexual as well as homophobic. Unfortunately, they just left me with the impression that everybody - even the seemingly homophobic players - was lesbian or bisexual.
More complaints about the writing: way too much viewing time was spent watching off-field stories and dialog. Aside from the first episode, when they were all trying out, most of the episodes spent very little time showing any baseball game or practice scenes. Sure, there were some game/practice scenes in each episode. But I don't think the writers found the ideal balance between how much time to devote to games/practices and how much time to devote to character development.
The acting overall wasn't good either. Legit women pro athletes are just as competitive as pro male athletes, and they take using effective techniques seriously. While I wouldn't exactly say any of the pitchers "threw like a girl", you could still easily tell that they were not seriously trying to at least make it look like they really knew how to pitch, or play other positions like professionals would, for that matter.
And why was there only one black woman who even attempted to try out? And that one woman was a woman with an average female physique, but was made out to be a women's baseball version of Serena Williams (who is actually very muscular and expected to be overpowering when compared to average female tennis players)? Yes, segregation was still around during the WWII era. But I think the show could have used at least a couple more black female actors to give perhaps a few more "flavors" to how black women of that era might cope with racism in different ways. It could have also eliminated an impression I got that the writers were stereotyping black female athletes as being physically more dominant than everybody else on the field.
Having read through some of the other lower scored reviews that are already here, I actually felt like most all of the authors of those lower reviews read my mind. Part of the bad acting involved women using clearly 2020's cliches and language when the show was supposed to be set in the 1940's. I'm pretty sure women in the 1940's never heard or thought of using terms like "kick rocks". But here we are in this show, with one of the players saying exactly that as if a bunch of modern 20-something women time traveled to the 1940's just to play pro women's baseball. There was plenty of "colorful" language as well, which I'd expect to hear in modern society...but not from a bunch of 1940's era women. Those aren't even the only examples that can be used to explain how disconnected the acting was from what the setting needed to be at least somewhat "believable".
I knew the quality of this series would be questionable when I saw that it had a 6.8-6.9 IMDB rating. That's not a bad rating to have at all, for a movie. But for series, it usually takes closer to an 8.0 or an 8.0+ for a show to merit Emmy considerations. A series with a 6.8-6.9 rating is more like a movie with a barely above 5 rating. After having seen most of the first season, I'd say the rating it has is not at all surprising.
6 Below: Miracle on the Mountain (2017)
Supposed to be a true story, but not enough actually true
I'm always a sucker for biographical/true story type movies. I can't say that I ever really got bored with this movie, but that's only because I watched the movie knowing nothing previously about the real life Eric LeMarque. There were some parts that definitely struck me as having been "creative liberties" taken with the script, but I remained interested in the movie particularly because I wanted to educate myself at least a little more on Eric's story. Unfortunately, far too many fake things that made me question whether any bit of the movie was at all realistic were part of the script. I'll venture a guess that the film crew's budget could have played a role in some of the many "goofs" that are not listed on this movie's "Goofs" section. Some of the goofs include (spoilers):
- Dealing with a pack of wolves. The real Eric LeMarque got lost while at Mammoth Mountain - a very large and popular ski resort in the central Sierra Nevadas in California. There hasn't been a single wolf seen in any part of California until after the real life version of this story occurred. And what wolves are now in California are still nowhere near Mammoth Mountain at least yet.
- The movie depicts him having stayed in a cabin in "Winterhaven", a location that is supposedly in Nevada. As far as I know, there are only two Winterhavens in the entire United States. One is on the far south end of California, right across the CA/AZ border from Yuma. The other is Winter Haven, FL. Yeah...like either of those locations has any mountains at all, let alone snow.
- One scene depicts him falling through snow into a frozen over lake or river. As far as I know, no such event really happened to the real Eric LeMarque. However, the real Eric did walk across a flowing river, then fell into the water after losing his balance while trying to drink the river water. The river even swept him downstream toward a waterfall before he was able to make it safely to the side. Why not film this scene more accurately than have him fall into a frozen lake? I think the real life soaking he got could have been filmed to be just as exciting an experience for viewers as the completely fake frozen lake scene that was actually filmed..
- The mountain peak that this movie depicts him having been found on is apparently a fictitious peak named Mount Widow's Peak. Hmm! I'm no Simpsons fan, but try Googling this location and you'll quickly learn that there is no such peak in California or Nevada...but there IS such a peak in the Simpsons TV series.
- In real life, Eric's mom (Susan) did not herself go to the mountain area to search for him. Though she really did initiate concerns about him being missing, the real life Susan contacted Eric's dad, then his dad and stepmother were the ones whom went out to the mountain to notify authorities about his missing status. As much as this movie is more about drama and not as much suspense, you'd think it would have been reasonable to accurately depict these events.
- As other reviewers already mentioned, there is only an 11yr age gap between Mira Sorvino and Josh Hartnett. Nothing against Mira, but I think they should have had somebody else play the Susan LeMarque role.
- The movie depicts Eric as being 6'3", which was mentioned in the Ski Patrol search initiation scene. The real life Eric is 5'10".
I don't expect every biographical movie to be the most exciting movie to watch, but I do expect them to make better attempts to respect the person whom they are making the movie about by making the story and scenes as accurate as possible. I probably would have given this movie a higher rating had it not been for the completely absent attempt to tell Eric's story more accurately. But I will praise them for at least featuring the real life Eric in footage at the end of the movie. Unfortunately, this is far from the best biographical genre movie that I've watched.