Movie Reviews: Million Dollar Arm

Movies about baseball, which tend to celebrate the mythology of ‘America’s national pastime’, are considerably more popular than the sport beyond the shores of the US. That fact is reflected in the story of Million Dollar Arm (PG), in which struggling American sports agent JB Bernstein (Jon Hamm) heads for cricket-loving India in order to unearth a rough (and cheap) diamond to be fashioned into a professional baseball pitcher.

The commercial logic is sound — a famous Indian pitcher opens up a new market of over a billion people for baseball — although JB’s theory of converting cricket bowlers into baseball pitchers hits a snag when Rinku Singh (Suraj Sharma) and Dinesh Patel (Madhur Mittal), a javelin thrower and a field hockey player, win his ‘Million Dollar Arm’ competition. Back in the US, Rinku and Dinesh have six months to make it to professional baseball standards, or JB’s business will go on the rocks… Based on a true story, and directed by Craig Gillespie, Million Dollar Arm pitches itself as a fascinating tale of nurture trumping nature. Ultimately, it’s JB Bernstein’s riches-to-riches tale, as the successful sports agent navigates a career bump and goes on to become even more successful, while the far more interesting tale of Singh and Patel is pushed to the margins. It’s a fine cast, with Alan Arkin, Lake Bell and Bill Paxton fleshing out the supporting roles, and Hamm is in fine form as the charismatic agent, but the story is a plodding by-the-numbers taleof sporting success against the odds.

The Grand Seduction (12A) is an anomaly in the film today: it takes a risk. In the era of a young, pre-packaged audience this amiable tale hopes to ensnare film fans usually ignored by the multiplex, movie lovers of ‘a certain age’. The appearance of heartthrob Taylor Kitsch (Battleship, Lone Survivor) might help. He’s a troubled cricket-loving city doctor duped into being the resident of the sleepy port in Nova Scotia by its mayor (a stomping Brendan Gleeson) in an attempt to encourage a factory plant to invest money in the dying fishing village. Cue many a hijink as the villagers scurry about to ensure the urbanite falls in love with the sticks, which means wire-tapping his house, urging the single postmistress (Liane Balaban) to give him the glad eye. The Doc Hollywood meets Waking Ned plot may be familiar but it’s got buckets of charm with Kitsch and Gleeson’s father-son relationship particularly touching. Michael Dowse, responsible for another charmer currently occupying cinemas, What If, pens the script. Your mammy will like it… if she hasn’t lost confidence in the movies by now.

Obvious Child (16) centres on motormouth comedienne Donna Stern (Jenny Slater), who is happy to use elements of her personal life when she hits the stage in a tiny New York club. But when Donna splits up with her two-timing boyfriend, and gets pregnant after a one-night stand with Max (Jake Lacy), she realises she might have to change her style — especially as Max, who remains blissfully ignorant of the pregnancy, appears to want a serious relationship.

Written and directed by Gillian Robespierre, Obvious Child is a spiky, acerbic comedy that employs throwaway humour to explore an everyday tragedy. Slater is terrific here, coping brilliantly with the challenge of playing a woman who is expected to be cynical and pithy in public, but who is experiencing a radical personal revolution that requires her to make big decisions about her own and others’ lives. There’s a very strong chemistry between her and Lacy, the former playing an irreverent, orthodox-challenging feminist, the latter a square, buttoned-down conventional guy who finds himself out of his depth but more than willing to swim as hard as it takes. Robespierre’s film isn’t simply an unconventional rom-com, however; it also encompasses Donna’s wildly different relationships with her divorced parents (played by the hugely underrated Richard Kind and Polly Draper), and her friends Nellie (Gaby Hoffman) and Joey (Gabe Liedman). The story does wander at times, but for the most part this is a refreshingly unsentimental tale of contemporary relationships.