Trouble With The Curve

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE (15)

D: Robert Lorenz

Warner Bros/Malpaso (Clint Eastwood, Robert Lorenz & Michelle Weisler)

USA 2012

111 mins

Sports/Drama

W: Randy Brown

DP: Tom Stern

Ed: Joel Cox & Gary D. Reach

Mus: Marco Beltrami

Clint Eastwood (Gus Lobel), Amy Adams (Mickey Lobel), Justin Timberlake (Johnny Flanagan), Matthew Lillard (Philip Sanderson), John Goodman (Pete Klein)

Robert Lorenz, a longtime collaborator of Clint Eastwood as a producer, takes on the directorial reins and coaxes the veteran out of acting retirement for this sports drama with heart.

Eastwood plays a wily, ageing baseball coach, who reluctantly agrees for his daughter to join him on a scouting trip, where she's ambitious to prove herself in a "man's world". 

Like all good sports movies, it's immaterial whether or not you're a fan of the represented sport in order to connect with the story, which in this case is about the broken relationship between a father and daughter, rather than baseball. There's a pointless and unnecessary romance subplot which feels as though it was crammed in to pad out the running time, but it doesn't detract too much from the main story.

Clint Eastwood pretty much does his usual here, but he's good at it and it works. The real star of the show is Amy Adams, who makes this movie her own and steals the limelight from her much-seasoned co-star.

7/10