Great Film: A League of Their Own
Stylish, warm and fun to watch
This movie is about ten times better than it has any right to be
considering how sappy director Penny Marshall could have been tempted
to make it, and how phony is the actual baseball played by the young
women. (More on this below.)
What makes it work are fine performances by Geena Davis as catcher
Dottie Hinson, "the best player in the league," and Lori Petty as her
younger sister, Kit Keller. Geena Davis absolutely looks the part with
her cool confidence and stately figure while Lori Petty is scrappy and
believable as the little sister whose puck and determination set the
stage for a sister-rivalry climax at the end.
Jon Lovitz as Ernie Capadino, the baseball talent scout, is a crackup
as he delivers just about all the best one liners. (Example: he's
watching Dottie and Kit milk the cows and asks, "Doesn't that hurt
them?" Geena shrugs for the city slicker, "They don't seem to mind."
Ernie thinks about it and then says, "Well, it would bruise the heck
out of me," which was doubly funny since he has his anatomy confused.)
But the guy who really holds the whole thing together is Tom Hanks as
one-time home run king Jimmy Dugan, who is now the Rockford Peaches'
alcoholic manager. I have seen Tom Hanks in a number of films, but I
don't think he was ever any better than he is here. His transformation
from a crude, uncaring drunk to the team's hard-nosed but soft-hearted
leader is very well and believably done. And Hanks was never more
charming and seldom funnier.
Just as good as the work of the fine cast is Marshall's clear,
old-fashioned direction. In many ways this film is a throwback to an
earlier time when films set out to warm the hearts of the audience and
uplift their spirits. Sure, there is evil in the world and you can't
win them all, but you can try, is what this film makes us feel, and if
you do, something good will happen. There is of course a somewhat
self-conscious retrospective look at the sorry political and social
state of women sixty years ago, but Marshall does not wallow in the
politics. Instead she emphasizes a fun-to-watch tale with real human
characters. The unpredictable, but believable ending was very
agreeable.
Okay now to some of the problems with the "baseball." Notice that we
first see Kit as a softball pitcher. How she made the transition from
throwing underhanded to being one of the best overhand hardball
throwers in the league in just a few months is...well, doubtful. And
the outfits they wore!
Ever try to slide into second trying to break up the double play
without sliding pads or even jersey pants? I don't think so. The girls
were bare-legged. To Marshall's credit she does show one girl with a
huge strawberry bruise on her thigh. Furthermore for those viewers who
have actually played baseball, the way many of the young women threw
and caught the ball was again, shall we say, doubtful. Marshall
employed as extras some young ladies who could actually play a little
and we see some shots of their style and grace, but the only star who
could even pretend to play at that level would be Rosie O'Donnell.
Madonna has some athletic ability, but to imagine her patrolling center
field and hauling down long drives strains credibility.
Okay, so what? If we put Tom Hanks at bat against even the most
mediocre of Class A pitchers, it would be obvious that he is no home
run king. In fact, I think Penny Marshall did a great job of creating
and maintaining the illusion of Big League skills for the players so
that we were not distracted from the story itself. Skillful editing
helped.
By the way, if they gave Academy Awards for a performance in a role
short of a supporting role but longer than a cameo (and maybe they
should), Megan Cavanagh would have won it for her touching
impersonation of Marla Hooch, a painfully shy and vulnerable, less than
pretty girl from the farm who finds herself as a baseball player in the
city as she steals some guy's heart with an unselfconscious, boozy,
off-key torch song. I also loved the scene where she is rocketing line
drives off the walls and through the windows of the high school
gymnasium.
Note the appearance of David L. Lander as the radio play-by-play guy.
He's best known as the wacky/creepy "Squiggy" Squiggman from the old
Laverne and Shirley TV sit-com. Here he plays it mostly straight but
does get to wear his hat with the bill up as Leo Gorcey did in the East
Side Kids (AKA The Bowery Boys) movies from the early forties.
Bottom line here: Uplifting, fun, and even worth seeing again.
Cast
- Jimmy Dugan played by Tom Hanks
- Dottie Hinson played by Geena Davis
- Mae Mordabito played by Madonna
- Kit Keller played by Lori Petty
- Ernie Capadino played by Jon Lovitz
- Ira Lowenstein played by David Strathairn
- Walter Harvey played by Garry Marshall
