Underdog baseball fable with Luke Wilson and Greg Kinnear strikes out with clichés and schmaltz.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
The schmaltzy-sounding “You Gotta Believe” is a small-time, “Bad News Bears”-style, underdog-type baseball fable based on a true story. Shot in Ontario, Canada, and set in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2002, the film is not exactly the most geographically accurate. The team’s coaches are played by veterans Luke Wilson and Greg Kinnear, who are both a bit old to have Little League-age kids. But there you are
Wilson is dyslexic Bobby Ratliff, whose son Robert (Michael Cash) is on the team and has some skills. A younger son, Peanut, is in the stands watching every game and popping wisecracks. Bobby is happily married to the loving wife and mother Patti (Canuck Sarah Gadon). Bobby’s fellow coach, Jon Keller (Kinnear), also has a son on the team, the struggling pitcher Walker (Etienne Kellici). The kids are your usual, although not very diverse, gang of gangly-armed, awkward of stature, shaggy-haired preteens. One of the team’s best players is a tall Latino named Rivera (Seth Murchison), who lives “in the ‘hood” and works at a produce market to save money for college. The ‘hood looks like Ontario. When Bobby is diagnosed with melanoma and a brain tumor or two, his team goes from below mediocre to good enough to win their regional championship game. Let’s just say that I was happy they won. The idea is that Bobby’s almost certainly terminal illness becomes an inspiration and rallying cry for the team.
This in no way justifies screenwriter Lane Garrison and director Ty Roberts, who previously made the 2021 sports drama “12 Mighty Orphans,” also with Luke Wilson, using the theme song of the 1960s TV show Rawhide (“Rollin,’ rollin,’ rollin”) to animate a 21st-century baseball montage.
If there is a trope of this sort of fare left un-adopted by Garrison and Roberts, I don’t know what. Patti and Kathy are both smarter than their husbands. The kids are completely wholesome and without any of the nasty quirks of childhood. OK, one kid (Jacob Mazeral) can’t keep his eyes off a slightly older spectator, Caroline (Ashley Emerson). When I was a kid, another kid from the “’hood” stole bullets from his policeman father and threw a few into a campfire we stood around. Don’t get me started.
You won’t see anything near that level of hormonal insanity here. The kids address their elders as ma’am and sir. I was thankful at the arrival of prolific and talented character actor Lew Temple (TV’s “The Walking Dead”) as “Master Sgt.” Mitch Belew. Temple is the only adult member of the cast who knows that “You Gotta Believe” is a comedy and a not very good one at that.
By the time the team gets to Pennsylvania for the two-week-long playoffs for the world Little League title, featuring many regional teams, including one from Japan, I can’t help but wonder who is paying to fly Bobby and Patti in, put them up in a Philadelphia hotel, and feed them. Earlier, we are informed that the family has to use its own savings to pay for Bobby’s hospital bills. Texas, right?
While Jon deals with the incompetent son of his law firm’s founder, Bobby pukes his guts out. Some hair falls out, but not enough to ruin Wilson’s looks. Patti quotes the Ethan Hawke of “Dead Poets Society” (1989) on the subject of “carpe diem.” It’s Latin, dudes. The semi-final Massachusetts team boasts a pretty girl pitcher. Get ready to meet the real coaches and players in archival footage to the tune of some generic country rock at the end. I don’t “gotta believe.”
‘You Gotta Believe’
Rating: PG for thematic content, language, and suggestive references.
Cast: Luke Wilson, Greg Kinnear, Sarah Gadon, Molly Parker
Director: Ty Roberts
Writer: Lane Garrison
Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common and suburban theaters
Grade: C
Boston Movie News 