For the Love of the Game (and the Players)
TCM movie #13 (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three was #12): Bull Durham.
I feel like I’ve heard of Bull Durham before, but I wasn’t sure if it was because it’s widely considered to be a classic or if it was because my dad is a baseball fan and therefore would be more likely to talk about it. The discussion prior to the screening of the movie called it one of the greatest sports movies of all time, so that answered that, but since my exposure to sports movies is minimal, I had no idea if I would like it or not. As it turns out, I did.
The story revolves around a North Carolina minor league baseball team, the Durham Bulls, and their pitcher, Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), later nicknamed Nuke. Nuke’s got a very fast pitch, but his control is nonexistent, and he’s a bit impatient off the field as well. He winds up with two unlikely sources to help him improve. One is Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), a long time minor league catcher who’s asked by the Bulls’ manager to help Nuke, which Crash grudgingly does. The other is Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), a baseball obsessive who has a habit of taking one rookie with potential every season and making them her lover, broadening their minds and improving their game in the process. Nuke’s pitching improves, a love triangle starts developing, and we get glimpses of what the rest of the Bulls are getting up to in-between all of this. There’s actually very little baseball involved, instead focusing on the characters. Maybe that’s why I like the movie as much as I do.
The word that I think best describes this movie is “good-natured”. There’s a lot of material in here that would make it easy to label it a comedy, but I think it’s more than that. There’s a lot of affection for baseball in the movie, from the team ribbing each other to the way everyone dreams of making it to the major leagues. The filmmakers (especially writer/director Ron Shelton, who was a minor league baseball player previously) seem to take the plot seriously, but put such a light touch on it that the audience roots for everyone while also being able to have fun with the silly things the characters get up to. I think that’s a difficult thing to pull off, and I admire the cast and crew of Bull Durham for doing it.
If there’s two weak spots in the movie, it’s that the plot takes a lot of detours for character beats or funny bits, and that I don’t quite buy the chemistry between Crash and Annie. Both of these are forgivable, however, albeit in different ways. In the case of the plot, the detours it takes are generally worth it, mostly because they’re amusing. In the case of the chemistry, this is made up for by a sex scene that may be one of the most sensual movie scenes I’ve ever seen (though the saxophones in the background may have contributed to that). So in the grand scheme of things, they’re less weak spots and more like slight defects that add to the charm.
This is definitely a movie worth seeing, whether you’re a fan of sports movies or not. The baseball material is easy for non-fans to understand, but what really matters are the characters, and they deliver an excellent reason to keep watching. It may be an obvious pun, but it has to be said; this movie hits a home run.
CAT ALERT: Near the end of the movie, we get two scenes that reveal that Annie has a cat, despite no previous evidence of her having one. Not that I’m complaining about a cat inclusion, of course. The cat seems very affectionate too, which is a nice bonus.
I feel like I’ve heard of Bull Durham before, but I wasn’t sure if it was because it’s widely considered to be a classic or if it was because my dad is a baseball fan and therefore would be more likely to talk about it. The discussion prior to the screening of the movie called it one of the greatest sports movies of all time, so that answered that, but since my exposure to sports movies is minimal, I had no idea if I would like it or not. As it turns out, I did.
The story revolves around a North Carolina minor league baseball team, the Durham Bulls, and their pitcher, Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), later nicknamed Nuke. Nuke’s got a very fast pitch, but his control is nonexistent, and he’s a bit impatient off the field as well. He winds up with two unlikely sources to help him improve. One is Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), a long time minor league catcher who’s asked by the Bulls’ manager to help Nuke, which Crash grudgingly does. The other is Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), a baseball obsessive who has a habit of taking one rookie with potential every season and making them her lover, broadening their minds and improving their game in the process. Nuke’s pitching improves, a love triangle starts developing, and we get glimpses of what the rest of the Bulls are getting up to in-between all of this. There’s actually very little baseball involved, instead focusing on the characters. Maybe that’s why I like the movie as much as I do.
The word that I think best describes this movie is “good-natured”. There’s a lot of material in here that would make it easy to label it a comedy, but I think it’s more than that. There’s a lot of affection for baseball in the movie, from the team ribbing each other to the way everyone dreams of making it to the major leagues. The filmmakers (especially writer/director Ron Shelton, who was a minor league baseball player previously) seem to take the plot seriously, but put such a light touch on it that the audience roots for everyone while also being able to have fun with the silly things the characters get up to. I think that’s a difficult thing to pull off, and I admire the cast and crew of Bull Durham for doing it.
If there’s two weak spots in the movie, it’s that the plot takes a lot of detours for character beats or funny bits, and that I don’t quite buy the chemistry between Crash and Annie. Both of these are forgivable, however, albeit in different ways. In the case of the plot, the detours it takes are generally worth it, mostly because they’re amusing. In the case of the chemistry, this is made up for by a sex scene that may be one of the most sensual movie scenes I’ve ever seen (though the saxophones in the background may have contributed to that). So in the grand scheme of things, they’re less weak spots and more like slight defects that add to the charm.
This is definitely a movie worth seeing, whether you’re a fan of sports movies or not. The baseball material is easy for non-fans to understand, but what really matters are the characters, and they deliver an excellent reason to keep watching. It may be an obvious pun, but it has to be said; this movie hits a home run.
CAT ALERT: Near the end of the movie, we get two scenes that reveal that Annie has a cat, despite no previous evidence of her having one. Not that I’m complaining about a cat inclusion, of course. The cat seems very affectionate too, which is a nice bonus.