SUMMER CATCH (2001) 1 1/2 stars out of 4. Starring Freddie Prinze Jr., Jessical Biel, Matthew Lillard, Fred Ward, Jason Gedrick, Brittany Murphy, Bruce Davison and Brian Dennehy. Screenplay by Kevin Falls and John Gatins. Story by Falls. Directed by Mike Tollin. Rated PG-13. Approx. 110 minutes. Summer Catch is a minor league effort, nine innings of banality with a lineup of stock situations and stereotypical characters.
This feature is like a double header, two sets of clichés for the price of one. Not only do we get the usual tired sports chestnuts, but the banal rich girl-poor boy love story is tossed in for good measure.
An original moment in this loser is as rare as a Chicago Cubs World Series appearance.
The screenplay by Kevin Falls and John Gatins, based on a story by Falls, merely lobs its plotline at the audience. This is a story that needed sent down for seasoning and more coaching.
Summer Catch centers around Ryan Dunne (Freddie Prinze Jr.), a Cape Cod youth chosen to participate in the prestigious Cape Cod Baseball League, supposedly a showcase for the best young amateur and college players in the country.
Ryan is a blue-collar kind of guy. He works with his dad taking care of the lawns of Cape Cod's rich and famous.
He also, as we are informed early, his own worst enemy. He has the potential and the talent, but always seems to self-destruct at the crucial moment.
So, Ryan tries to remained focused on baseball. Then he meets Tenley Parrish (Jessica Biel), daughter of one of the blue bloods whose lawn he manicures. Tenley, a name only a hack screenwriter could invent, is unlike her snobbish counterparts and falls for Ryan.
If you can't figure out where all this nonsense leads, then you need a remedial course in film viewing.
As always Prinze is pretty to look at, but his performance mainly consists of facial expressions: puppy dog love, heartbreak, frustration, self-loathing or determination.
Biel cries a lot, while Bruce Davison merely acts smarmy as her class-conscious father. The only beacon is Matthew Lillard's fun-loving Billy Brubaker, the team's catcher.
Summer Catch borrows situations and stylings from other baseball movies, such as Bull Durham and The Natural.
No curve balls here, no sliders. Every pitch is predictable. A blind umpire could call this movie.
Summer Catch is strictly rookie league moviemaking. It has as much chance of making the movie hall of fame as the Dodgers have of moving back to Brooklyn.
Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, IN. He can be reached by e-mail at bloom@journal-courier.com or at bobbloom@iquest.net. Other reviews by Bloom can be found at www.jconline.com by clicking on golafayette. Bloom's reviews also can be found on the Web at the Internet Movie Database: http://www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Bob+Bloom
========== X-RAMR-ID: 29318 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 246237 X-RT-TitleID: 1109555 X-RT-SourceID: 872 X-RT-AuthorID: 1363 X-RT-RatingText: 1.5/4
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews