It's an incredibly dumb urban sports movie that tries to cover racism and male comradery. Keanu Reeves plays a gambling low life who gets stuck coaching kids, so it's nothing you haven't seen before. I can tell that it wasn't supposed to be good, but that doesn't make it okay.

It took me a week to come out with a rating on this one, and I still can't decide whether it's a pretty good movie with some really bad parts, or a bad movie with a few really good parts. The screenplay seems decent, but the dialogue is rough; Keanu Reeves is mostly bad, Diane Lane is mostly good. The sports scenes are more cliched and contrived than in any sports movie in recent memory - who makes up bristol board signs and cheers THAT much for little league baseball?? - but the "ghetto scenes" got away from the cliches that one usually sees in films with that subject matter and are surprisingly raw. All in all, the contrast the film draws between the hopelessness of day-to-day life in this particular community and the magic of baseball is very striking, and almost too stark for the film to hang together. The potential in this film is what keeps you watching, and though its execution is questionable, you don't really lose faith in the story, and I think most people will stick it out rather than turn it off. Most people.