My Review of "Hard Ball"

Hard Ball is an underdog baseball movie that came out in 2001. 20 years ago things were quite different from what they are today. So you'll see a lot of things here that people today kind of complain about. As a movie itself it's kind of a paint by numbers story but still enjoyable.

The movie starts off with the main character Connor. He's a down and out gambling addict. There are a number of bets that he's made in the past week that have really put him on the deep end. Now he's running for his life from these loan sharks after their money.

Desperate for money he goes to everyone begging for some cash. That is until he meets up with friend Jimmy. Though the solution isn't what he expected. Jimmy is a lawyer that does charitable work in the community. He sees a situation that could possibly clean up Connor's act.

Instead of giving Connor all of the money upright he offers Connor a job. Coach a inner-city youth little league team and receive $500 a week. Not really having any other alternative, Connor agrees to the deal.

This is when he meets with the kids. Unlike a bunch of other underdog stories, these kids can play. The only problem is that they're poor and no one believes in them. As a poor team not a lot of people take care of them or even want them playing.

So in a way it's similar to the Mighty Ducks story except that the kids are actually competent from the very beginning. There's no real training montages. Oddly enough they didn't have too much team building exercises either. The movie is more about Connor and how he's being influenced by being with the kids.

They go into a little detail as to how the kids are living with violence all around them. It's pretty evident that they need some sort of positive male presence around them. This movie made it seem as though all of them live without fathers and they're all single parent children or something. Connor is supposed to be playing their a father like figure role for them.

There are some abrupt pacing issues throughout the movie. When you think that the movie is about getting the team together it just cuts away to Connor and his addictive gambling issues. Unfortunately this movie doesn't totally pace at a pleasant rate between these transitions. It kind of takes you out of the movie and I thought they needed another set of eyes to review this movie before it had come out.

Needless to say there are some fun moments to this movie albeit pretty cheesy moments. It is an early 2000s movie and corniness was pretty prevalent at the time so you'll have to excuse this movie. This stuff was accepted at the time.

Some kids nowadays won't be able to handle some of the triggering things in this movie such as the way that Connor acts and how others around him just accept it. It has a bit of white savior situations in this movie. The greatest unforeseen trigger is that they have R Kelly in the soundtrack. Still if you watch this movie with an early 2000s mindset you'll understand that those things were widely acceptable back in the day.

Overall, I enjoyed most of the movie and had an okay time. It was a 2 hour diversion that wasn't uncomfortable for me. With that said I know a lot of people that wouldn't be able to handle this movie and would pick it apart. I will have to give this movie a 6 out of 10. I wouldn't really recommend this movie as there are so many better underdog stories out there to pick from. This is just a meh for me.