Review of A League of Their Own (1992) by Ben L — 10 Jul 2014

This is a film I watched many times back in my teen years, but I have actually not watched it in at least 15 years. It turns out everything I thought about it then is still true now. For starters it has a lot of good comedy. The best moments come from Tom Hanks and John Lovitz but there are others that work, and genuinely make me laugh out loud. In fact I wish they had just committed to making this a pure comedy. Of course you can include some dramatic moments in any comedy, but unfortunately this felt like a drama that included some comedic moments instead. Perhaps they could have pulled off a drama better if they were more focused. Sadly they failed to commit to a dramatic vision. At times they appear to be making a movie about the entire AAGPBL. Ira Lowenstein debates with Walter Harvey about the value of the league, and the need to keep it going. We see the room opening in the Hall of Fame. They even put an added pressure onto the games by convincing the girls they have to make it more exciting to draw in fans. So you'd think that was the movie being made. But, no, we also spend a decent amount of time getting to know each of the members of the Rockford Peaches. They each get their moment to shine and reveal an aspect of their character. We spend time watching them develop their manager into someone who cares. We even get intimate emotional moments where they have to deal with husbands dying in the war. Sounds like a solid theme for the movie, but we're not done with major plots yet.

Then there is the story of 2 sisters. The protagonist of the movie is Geena Davis who is heavily envied by her little sister, played by Lori Petty. This story of the sisters' constant rivalry is also popping up throughout the movie. I have to stop right here for a moment in order to express one thing: Lori Petty's performance is one of the most annoying character portrayals in cinema history. I hate Kit Keller more than Willie Scott! To me she is the villain of A League of Their Own, and she wins in the end! She doesn't grow, she doesn't learn anything about loving her sister, she isn't taught to take her ego out of it and accept her own limitations. No! Instead she overcomes her limitations somehow, which will merely grant validity to her stubborn attitude and whiny behavior. I cannot stand her and literally drop my rating for this film an entire star because I have to see her stupid face.

OK, rant over. The point I was trying to make is that the writers lacked a defined vision on where they wanted to take this film. I probably could have accepted any one unified direction (as long as it didn't feature Lori Petty) but this was so muddled. A perfect example of the problems with this movie is the scene where a black woman picks up the ball and throws it. They literally freeze in the middle of a montage of the girls playing well for this completely unrelated moment. In the right film (perhaps a more serious one about the difficulty of women earning the respect of a nation) this scene would fit as a symbolic statement that there are others who are marginalized in our world. But this isn't that movie, because they just had us laughing only a few minutes before. I do like some scenes in A League of Their Own, and I would gladly watch those again for the laughs, but I never want to see Kit Keller again in my life, so I'll probably never watch the entire movie again.