Review of Bull Durham (1988) by Douglas L — 14 Aug 2014

This baseball flick is a treat from the 80's. It takes sex and mixes it with the philosophies of baseball, or makes the attempt to mix the two. The film takes itself very seriously but does not hold well today.

For the most part the jokes aren't funny anymore and the musical queues occur too often to suggest that this happy go lucky, feel-good film just keeps on giving, when really the moments are fairly ineffective and melodramatic.

There are a lot of situations that occur without any explanation and the viewers are meant to just assume that things just happened to fall into place that way. This picture was sculpted to have "a lot of heart" as I am sure the producers said over and over again.

I felt though that despite the acting, which was pretty good, there was little to this picture. I watched it feeling almost nothing at all. I liked seeing Tim Robbins as a younger guy performing and Susan Sarandon and Kevin Costner as well.

As the film was nearing its end I felt that I learned nothing save for how to make a "sexy" formulaic baseball film but in that formula there is definitely something inside that reads classic.

The attitude that the picture evokes is definitely one that holds the spirit of the sport that I can remember somehow but do not feel is around anymore with the sport. The great American pastime is well and alive on the surface of this picture but in its core I feel there is too little enthusiasm.

Or perhaps it is served in a flavor I do not prefer.