TIN CUP
A film review by Michael Redman
Copyright 1996 Michael Redman
** (out of ****)
Kevin Costner and director Ron Shelton have achieved the impossible. Although I have put in a bit of time chasing and losing the little white ball, neither I nor any other inhabitant of this planet have ever suggested that _observing_ golf is the slightest bit interesting. Costner and Shelton have made the game of golf watchable...well, at least one hole is.
Roy McAvoy (Costner) operates a run-down driving range in Salome, Texas while dodging bill collectors. He spends his days drinking and hanging out with his cronies as he shares a trashed-out Winnebago-turned-home with buddy Romeo (Cheech Marin). Everything fell apart for McAvoy a few years back when he went for the spectacular shot rather than the safe win and lost the opportunity to become a big time golf pro. Nowadays he's the Zen golf poet in the dusty backwaters of what might have been.
It's all comfortably downhill for the aging McAvoy. Until, that is, the new lady psychologist Molly Griswold (Rene Russo) drops by the range for golf lessons. Our resident swing master falls for her, vowing to give up strippers and biker chicks. She's not interested because she has a boyfriend. Said boyfriend turns out to be McAvoy's lifetime golf rival Dave Simms (Don Johnson).
In order to impress the new babe in town and love of his life, McAvoy decides to qualify for and win the US Open. From then on, it's a race between him and Simms for the golf championship and the heart of the beautiful doctor.
Most of the film is predictable. You know who Griswold is going to end up with. You know who is the better golfer. You know just about everything that is going to happen. The ending is somewhat of surprise, but nothing totally unexpected.
The scenes with Costner and Russo don't ring true. He does his best down and out sports figure with a heart. She comes across as a ditzy Diane Keaton, but not as charming. Their chemistry needs a catalyst that never appears.
On the other hand, the Costner and Marin relationship is the best thing in the film. Marin's Romeo is thankfully severely underplayed from what you might expect from a survivor of Cheech & Chong craziness. The two pals yell and scream at each other, but always return to their friendship. Romeo might have been a little off target when he gets McAvoy drunk the night before an important golf meet as a part of his training, but he makes up for it later.
Like the best sports films, this is not about golf, but about the people that surround the game. Very little in the plot department, although the characters and their banter make it adequately entertaining.
[This review appeared in "The Bloomington Voice", Bloomington, Indiana, 9/3/96. Michael Redman can be reached at mredman@bvoice.com]
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