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Critics Consensus: A heart-warming sports flick, The Rookie greatly benefits from understated direction and the emotional honesty Dennis Quaid brings to the role of Jim Morris.
Critic Consensus: A heart-warming sports flick, The Rookie greatly benefits from understated direction and the emotional honesty Dennis Quaid brings to the role of Jim Morris.
All Critics (153) | Top Critics (42) | Fresh (128) | Rotten (25) | DVD (14)
At two-plus hours, The Rookie is a good 20 minutes too long, but for father-son teams waiting eagerly for the umpire's "Play ball!", it's an uplifting season opener.
Morris ultimately lasted two partial seasons in the majors, and the film's rendering of his minor-league struggle is so enjoyable you want to see more of that and less of the everyday life preceding it.
Though Hancock traffics in a lot of bogus small-town sentiment, The Rookie exhibits a refreshingly honest understanding of baseball as a job, with long road trips away from home and a workmanlike routine.
It's Quaid and his fellow actors, Rachel Griffiths and Brian Cox, who lift the film out of its intermittent doldrums, and together they deliver that rare thing: a nuanced sports movie.
Until The Rookie came along, I'd forgotten how good and smart a family film can be.
Deftly constructed to stoke the baseball-phenom fantasies of coulda-shoulda-woulda middle-aged guys and fields-of-dreaming young diamond studs.
As Morris, the reliable Quaid throws heat, delivering smoothly in dramatic scenes and convincingly from the mound.
Refreshing and compelling.
This entry in the genre is a true story that is, sadly, hampered by some signposted plot developments and undernourished characters.
The Rookie is shot through with star-spangled sentiment, but its light touch and "true story" origins combine to make it feelgood fun even for schmaltz-phobic Brits.
Slow moving, even pedestrian at times, yet this Dennis Quaid vehicle strikes a lot of genuinely heartwarming moments along the way.
Earnest, uplifting baseball melodrama
Filled with very solid performances by the entire cast, "The Rookie" presents the true story of a man who grew up as a kid, moving around with his family and being driven away from his dreams in baseball. When his family finally finds a final resting place, he must live his life there, isolated from baseball and focussing on dirty work and family. Once the opportunity to teach and coach a house-league baseball team arises, he does not hesitate. This sparks people to talk about how good of a pitcher this coach is, and his career escalates from there. Like I said, the acting is great, the story is presented very well, the script is solid, and the direction is nice and tender. "The Rookie" may not be the best baseball film of all time, but it is a very solid effort/entry into the genre.
Super Reviewer
The Rookie is one of the few sports films that really doesn't do anything for me. The film is overly cliched and is more irritating and boring than anything else. I saw this film made it on the list of worst sports movies ever made. I can understand why. The film is very poorly written, the acting is terrible, the plot is predictable and Dennis Qaids kid in the film is irritating as hell. But its normal for a Disney film. That's to be expected. I thought the film was really a chore to finish, the only reason that I have this is because it came as a two pack packaged with a film that I wanted. I thought this film would be good, it wasn't. Sometimes a story with lots of cliches can be interesting and fun, when the script is well written, and the cast is good. But thats not the case with The Rookie. The Rookie tries too hard at being a feel good film, and instead it misses the mark, big time. Theres little interest in the film to be had 40 minutes in and the film feels sloppy, and poorly made. The Rookie could have been a great film, but it uses the usual feel good movie formula in such a bad way that the film is laughable. If you're looking for one of the worst feel good sports films, then The Rookie is that film. Boring, predictable and so poorly made all you want to do after watching this film is forget about it.
Life is perfect, isn't it? There are no hitches, and it just moves along perfectly. That's how life is, right? Well, maybe in a Disney movie, but that's not what makes a good film. When you think about it, it's the ups and downs in characters' lives that makes movies interesting. Who cares if this guy's life is perfect? It's boring. Yeah, it's based on a true story, so they couldn't do much about it, but they really should have taken some creative license with this one, because watching this guy have success at everything he does with absolutely no failure is not interesting. It's boring. Plain and simple. Not to mention that it seemed that half the movie was Quaid's kid smiling at his daddy. Though Quaid does what he can with the poorly-written role he's given, the film still sucks.
great, one of the great sports flicks
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