3.5 stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang
Underdog sports stories are
irresistible. Fish-out-of-water stories are irresistible.
You’d therefore think that a film
combining both elements would be can’t-miss.
You’d think.
 |
| Newly arrived in the United States, Dinesh (Madhur Mittal, far left) and Rinku (Suraj Sharma, center left) are delighted by their first visit to an American baseball field. The event is recorded for posterity by Amit (Pitobash, far right), while J.B. (Jon Hamm) looks on with pleasure. Unfortunately, and rather cruelly, he's about to abandon his new charges, naively believing them capable of carrying on from this point forward. |
In fairness, Million Dollar Arm has a lot going for it, starting with a
fact-based premise that is buoyed further by several thoroughly charming
performances. Unfortunately, these virtues are offset by director Craig
Gillespie’s protracted approach — his film is both too slow and, at slightly
more than two hours, too long — and a casting decision that doesn’t work as
everybody undoubtedly hoped.
Thomas McCarthy’s screenplay
takes a gentle, light-comedy approach to real-world sports agent J.B. Bernstein’s
gimmick-laden visit to India in 2007, when he staged a reality show-type
competition in order to uncover untapped baseball talent. J.B. felt, not
unreasonably, that in a nation obsessed with cricket, surely a few “bowlers” could be groomed into
Major League pitchers.
As shaped by McCarthy, J.B. (Jon
Hamm) and his partner and best friend Aash (Aasif Mandvi) are treading dire
financial waters. The dream of fronting their own agency is about to go under
for the third and final time, salvation resting entirely on a potential deal
with an extravagantly fickle football star (Rey Maualuga).
Things don’t work out, leaving
J.B. to clutch at the flimsiest of straws, after some late-night TV flipping
between a cricket match and Susan Boyle’s stunning performance of “I Dreamed a
Dream” on Britain’s Got Talent (an
event that took place in April 2009, but hey, who pays attention to such niggly
little details?).
J.B. hatches an improbable
scheme, manages to secure financial backing from a taciturn investor named Mr.
Chang (Tzi Ma), and soon finds himself in India.
Gillespie is on firm ground
during this sequence, evoking portraits of various Indian locales that are by
turns exotic and amusing. J.B. liaises with a “fixer” (Darshan Jariwala) and
quickly picks up a protégé of sorts: Amit (rising Indian film star Pitobash, in
a thoroughly delightful American debut), an eager-beaver volunteer, gopher,
translator, right-hand man and die-hard baseball fan.
They’re also joined by Ray
Poitevint (Alan Arkin), a cantankerous retired baseball scout who doesn’t need
to watch for potential; he can hear
the sound of a proper fastball. (Didn’t Clint Eastwood’s Gus Lobel rely on that
skill, in 2012’s Trouble with the Curve?
And does Arkin ever play anything but cantankerous?)
