Bea Swanson
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
Zlatica
One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
Francene Odetta
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
Tony Adam
After seeing THE SCOUT again on TV, I've come to accept that the main problem with the film is that it's actually two completely different films smashed together. On the one hand you've got the comedy surrounding Albert Brooks and his hunt for that one baseball player who will save his scouting career. As one of our great comic screen writers, Brooks delivers some witty lines now and then, particularly in the first part of the film. However, the second film is a half-written drama dealing with the emotional/mental problems of Steve Nebraska, Brendan Frasier's character. There's next to know explanation and/or resolution to his emotional storyline, and although the wonderful Diane Wiest as his psychiatrist is on the team, she barely makes it to the warm-up spot and pretty much fades out without much ado. Screenwriter Brooks keeps tossing tantalizing hints into Frasier's emotional mix - the laundry concerns, for example -- but then does nothing with them. By the last inning, THE SCOUT can't decide whether it's FEAR STRIKES OUT or MAJOR LEAGUE.
FilmRetrospect
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the movie. I've probably seen it about 10 times, and it never fails to entertain me and give me some good laughs here and there. It's your typical goofy Brendan Frasier comedy, although something tells me that's not what exactly what it was going for. I didn't buy into any of the dramatic elements of the movie... Brendan Frasier's character(his goofy behavior), as well as some of the plot elements made it very hard for me to take the movie completely seriously. The fact that Steve Nebraska (Frasier) was supposedly the "greatest player to ever live" and his ability to strike every batter out with 100+ MPH fastballs and even the ability to hit a home run every time at bat seemed a little ridiculous to me. Also, the conflict that arose towards the middle of the movie (about Nebraska's mysterious past/his family) should have been delved into a little more. But Other than those complaints, I'll say that I enjoyed The Scout for what it was, which was an above average baseball comedy with enough laughs and plenty of entertainment to keep me watching for 2 hours.
maughancannes-2
"The Scout" is an underrated comedy, which though never quite hitting the heights gives good value in the funny-sentimental entertainment stakes and benefits from two excellent performances (Albert Brooks - in a role "Seinfeld"'s Jason Alexander would probably over-play on television - and Brendan Fraser). The hidden depths of the film - the young player's childhood "abuse" for instance - remain hidden (the movie seems shy about going there) but as old-style, far-fetched shtick the picture works very nicely.
darko2525
The Scout is one of those sports movies that gets it right in enough ways to make it watchable, but gets it wrong enough to make you cringe in more spots than you'd like. Brendan Fraser is really terrific as the dopey, wide-eyed innocent of a pitcher who becomes the subject of a massive game of tug of war at first between teams to see who signs him, and then between his love of baseball and his fear of failure. His career has flourished thanks to roles like this, the downy innocent amid a swamp of leaches. This part of the movie is really good. The huge, over-exaggerated bidding war between baseball clubs for his service, it all is real enough to be familiar, and satirical enough to really make fun of and kind of predict baseball's current situation, in which money has become more and more the driving force behind the game. The movie also has a bevvie of terrific cameos like Bret Saberhagen, Keith Hernandez, who oddly seem mistcast as Mets stars in a movie that circles around the Yankees, and of course, a small but prominant role for Yankee owner George Steinbrenner. But in the end all of this winds into a ridiculous debut outing in the first game of the World Series. Let's start with the fact that you can't just join the roster in the World Series. It doesn't work that way. No matter how touted you are, no team will carry a pitcher on their post-season roster (and no, if you're not on that roster the whole way, you cannot join it) who won't pitch unless you get the Series. It doesn't work that way. And his 81 pitch, 81 strike perfect game is ludicrous. I mean completely preposterous. This is a movie that gets so much right in its satire of the game's economics (the Yankees winning the bidding war here is a nice little nod to the current situation where the Yankees are hated throughout the baseball world for their tossing around of money as if it were the fake paper stuff you get with a Monopoly board) and gets so much wrong in the baseball sense. In how good Steve Nebraska (Fraser) is, all sense of realism is throw horribly out the window, and the movie becomes little more than a silly baseball movie. As a Yankee fan, and a fan of the game itself, i expect better of a baseball movie.
