Hardball

Reviewed by:
Eric Alt

i>Hardball is so utterly and completely aware of its conventional nature that it doesn’t even bother to connect its clichés with anything resembling a story. Call it a “cliché sampler,” or some kind of boring sports-allegory Greatest Hits tape. Just barely holding it all together is one of the worst performances from an actor not exactly known for his great performances. Just as George Clooney learned that bobbing one’s head doesn’t mean “acting,” so Keanu Reeves needs to realize that flailing one’s arms about does not mean “showing emotion.” Only once in Hardball does Johnny Utah touch upon something like real acting—no, we don’t mean the tearful speech scene—but it’s too fleeting to matter. (We’ll leave it up to you guys to figure out what scene we’re talking about. E-mail your answers to Roger Ebert.) Overall, Hardball tries to be a grittier Bad News Bears (Tanner and Engelberg were never in danger of being shot by crack dealers) by focusing on a team of inner city youths from Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project. (The same one from Candyman!) It fails on all counts: Keanu never coaches, but the kids magically transform from bitter youths to model student-athletes after being “Touched by a White Man.” It’s almost as offensive as the tear-jerker ending, which is such a shameless manipulation of your emotions that even Steven Spielberg would cry foul.

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