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Critics Consensus: Although Hardball contains some touching moments, they are not enough to transcend the sports formula.
Critic Consensus: Although Hardball contains some touching moments, they are not enough to transcend the sports formula.
All Critics (100) | Top Critics (28) | Fresh (39) | Rotten (61) | DVD (8)
A smarmy proposition passing itself off as family fun in the style of The Bad News Bears.
Works where it counts, on the emotional level.
Does surprisingly few lurches as it walks the tightrope between urban realism ... and family entertainment.
There's no cork inside Hardball, but there's more than enough corn.
There's nothing wrong with a good cry, or a good cliche, and Hardball offers both by the barrel.
Just dreadful.
A charming sports drama that's more about humanity than the joy of winning.
Had Paramount played more team ball, they coulda been a contender
This umpire calls Hardball out at first base.
This is less a hardball than a softball, without any curves or surprises.
Esforçando-se ao máximo para arrancar lágrimas do espectador, o filme apela para todas as convenções estabelecidas por produções semelhantes, falhando em todas as tentativas.
...Hardball is much darker and far more adult than the commercials and trailer want you to believe.
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.
Super Reviewer
This hard-edged little dream deserves plenty of credit for avoiding the light comedy and fairy-tale conclusions by which underdog sports sagas usually are known, and would deserve an even higher rating were it not for Keanu Reeves's wooden (as usual) performance in the lead role. Really fantastic and emotional home run story.
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.
This is a really dark movie really. The main guy is in the dumps in a bad way and he hooks up with inner city kids to play baseball. He is pretty much a scummy guy until the end and he doesn't seem to get the lesson the situation is trying to show him. The ending is a real bummer and you leave this movie feeling worse than when you started it.
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