BULL DURHAM
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1988 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Comedy-drama about a minor league
baseball team and a love triangle involving two players. The
major characters are fleshed out well, but it would have been
better to see more of some of the others. Rating: +1.
BULL DURHAM is a kind of comedy we don't see much of any more. There are a lot of comedies being made now, but most seem to be of a formula. Take one or more comics established by being on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, SECOND CITY, etc., and add a script full of jokes you would have to be blind AND deaf to miss--by definition subtlety means someone might miss a gag. The comedies you get then are films like the horribly unfunny SPIES LIKE US, DRAGNET, and DR. DETROIT. BULL DURHAM is more like the comedies they made most of the time in the 1940s and 1950s. What humor it has is derived from the interaction of believable personalities in believable situations. The only thing keeping BULL DURHAM from being a throwback to the subtler comedies of the 1940s is several fairly explicit sex scenes.
BULL DURHAM tells the story of one season in the life of a minor league ball team, the Durham Bulls. The team has, among others, a pitcher, Nuke Laloosh (played by Tim Robbins), who has a hundred-horsepower pitching arm and a nine-volt brain; a catcher, Crash Davis (well-played by Kevin Costner); and two groupies. One groupie is the owner's daughter (played by Jenny Robertson) and the other, Annie Savoy (played by Susan Sarandon), is an odd fan who has turned baseball into a sort of religion and has sort of become a team institution. Crash has been hired not just to catch, but also to keep Nuke out of trouble as the big, dumb super-pitcher is groomed for the majors. His job is complicated by the attentions of Ms. Savoy, who is indecisive whether it is the pitcher or the catcher she wants to sleep with.
BULL DURHAM gives us some tantalizing views of the characters of the team members and especially the managers, but unfortunately these characters are never filled out. Most of the story deals with Sarandon's character who--for someone with no more status with the team than "fan"--is never far from the action. Some of the action she generates herself by tying ball players to beds and reading to them poetry by Blake and Whitman. And though Costner's character is a bit stereotypical--the embittered veteran player-- he plays the role well. With a rating of +1 on the -4 to +4 scale, it brings to four the number of sports films I have liked. (THE NATURAL got a +3 from me, and IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING and HOOSIERS got +1s.)
Mark R. Leeper
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