Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

mainefred The producers were obviously trying to cash in on the popularity of Bull Durham, but this was a bad misfire. 5 percent baseball. 95 percent psychobabble, with Costner and Preston endlessly discussing their relationship, the rules of the game, etc, etc. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan without the humor. And what the Tiger's ace pitcher could see in this messed- up gal is a mystery. At 40 years old, he should have known better. Susan Sarandon was a much more convincing match for him.If you like juvenile dialog about love affairs, you may find this interesting. But if you're looking for a baseball movie like Bull Durham or Field of Dreams, forget this one. It's a love story, and not a very good one.

The_Film_Cricket 'For Love of the Game' combines two stories: One I had a genuine interest in and the other a tired wheezy old genre piece that I've seen a million times. Sad thing is, it's the latter that eventually takes over completely.The movie stars Kevin Costner (who until now had never been in a bad sports movie) as Billy Chapel, a 40 year-old pitcher who's game has seen better days. He's close to retirement and as the movie opens he has set an elegant dinner for his girlfriend who never shows. Even worse (and these things just conveniently happen on the same day) he has been traded and the team has been sold.I might have been genuinely interested in the story of an over-the-hill pitcher and his struggle to hold onto the talent that he once had and that alone is what drew me to the movie. But director Sam Raimi hammers together a tired old love story complete with all the nuts and bolts that no bad love story is ever without.There is the obligatory scene in which the two meet-cute in an unusual place (by the roadside when her car breaks down). She doesn't know who he is and knows virtually nothing about baseball (would it be too much to ask the screenwriters if the hero could fall for a sports nut?). The fall madly in love before she loses confidence in him and a huge misunderstanding leads to one of those big emotional scenes in which it looks like she will leave him forever to take a job overseas. Does she? I guarantee that you have seen this movie before and know the outcome.The movie is a surprise to me. Costner has starred in plenty of bad movies but until this movie he has never starred in a bad sports movie especially baseball after gems like 'Bull Durham' and 'Field of Dreams'. He's made his mark as box office poison in the sci-fi genre but I hope this doesn't mean that that reputation is moving over to the sports movie arena.I'm also surprised that this movie comes from Sam Raimi. In 1998 he made the hard-edged 'A Simple Plan', the story of three men who find $4,000,000 in a plane crash and struggle to keep it a secret which leads to distrust and tragedy. That movie was about human nature and never for once did we anticipate where it was going.There are two scenes in 'For Love of the Game' in which Costner is on the mound and is able to block out everything around him by 'Focusing on the mechanism'. Perhaps that logic should have been applied to the screenplay.

richard-1787 This movie is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too long, and that's not the worst of its problems.Perhaps the worst of its problems is that it tries to be two very different movies.On the one hand, it tells the story of a great major league pitcher, as he recalls the last several years of his life while pitching what starts out as an unimportant game and ends up becoming the most important game of his career. It is the story of a man who triumphs over adversity - pain in his shoulder, etc. - to pitch a last, great game.On the other hand, it's the story of a man who, off the field, becomes involved with a woman who only causes him trouble. She wants him to NEED her, and by the last scene, though he has pitched a perfect game, which is enough to put most men on cloud 9 for the rest of their lives, he tells her that he NEEDS her, they kiss in what is supposed to be a very romantic public kiss, and one imagines that the producers thought that would win over large audiences of middle-aged women.I can't watch this movie as a stereotypical woman - that's not how nature made me. I can only say that, for me, the romance was constantly aggravating, because the protagonist allowed himself to become and remain involved with a woman who constantly wanted him to choose between her and his real passion, baseball.But do many women really expect men to subordinate their non-romantic passions for them and tell them that they NEED them? Not that they love them, which is completely understandable, but that they NEED them? I don't know.So this is what the movie is about, and it keeps going on, and on, and on, with more incidents. The story simply does not merit going on over 2 hours about this.If you're looking for a baseball movie, this is likely to disappoint you. If you're looking for the story of a man who comes to the realization that NEEDING a woman is more important than accomplishing something important in his life, maybe this is for you. If you even exist.

PJ Fuller A couple of quick points. First, John C. O'Reilly was really, REALLY miscast in this movie, There's no way he should have been cast, but he played the character as a sentimental sap....most catchers are hard-ass, get-it-done now guys who know the game well - but not overly sentimental. This really affected the baseball aspect of the movie. Second...the trade to the Giants. The trading deadline is done by this time of the year, and the waiver-wire deals are also done, so there's no way he'd be traded - especially to name the team he'd be traded to. That's a call for the GM. A better plot line would to be that the new owners want to commit to a youth movement and will move Chapel in the off-season for a prospect or two...but either way, he's done in Detroit. But Costner & baseball are a good fit - bad fitting uni's and all...