When it comes to drama, cliched sports drama strikes out
"The Final Season" wants to be a cinematic valentine to the all-American sport of high school baseball.
Instead, it's more like a valentine to shallow sports movie cliches and poor filmmaking.
From the get-go, "Final Season" overdoses on an Aaron Coplandesque score that gives it the aura of an imitation of "The Natural."
David Mickey Evans' drama has been inspired by the true story of Iowa's Norway High School Tigers, who won 19 straight state baseball championships before officials announced the school would be closed after a district merger.
The people of Norway become outraged.
The school district's president (Marshall Bell), presented as the embodiment of either pure evil or stupidity, doesn't care. He fires the team's winning coach, Jim Van Scoyoc (Powers Boothe), then hires his inexperienced assistant, Kent Stock (erstwhile hobbit Sean Astin), to coach the final season.
Can Stock, the coach of a women's volleyball team, possibly pull the Tigers together for their 20th state championship?
Here's a better question: Can "The Final Season" get through a single scene without trotting out stereotypes and lame slow-motion shots?
In Norway, people who live in small towns and love baseball are OK. People from big cities aren't.
Take Chicagoan Burt Akers (Tom Arnold), a real-estate salesman. He used to live in Norway, but moved out. He's returned home to dump his teenage son Mitch (Michael Angarano) for the semester.
"I'm not a small-town guy," Burt burbles. "I'm a big-city guy!"
That means he's a terrible father who ignores Mitch. We know he's a big-city kid because he wears a Dead Kennedys T-shirt and smokes cigarettes. Can playing baseball for the Tigers redeem his lost, big-city soul?
In Norway, people who don't get baseball aren't very bright. Take state education official Polly Leigh Hudson (Rachel Leigh Cook). She doesn't know anything about baseball, but she knows shutting down the Tigers makes economic sense.
She's supposed to be a token romantic interest for Stock the single coach. Yet, the poor guy never makes it to first base with her, let alone hits a homer.
When it comes to taking a position on the importance of sports in high school education, "The Final Season" hits a foul. Instead, this movie is content to re-enact the Tigers' final game in one dull, uninspired sequence.
"How do you want to be remembered?" Stock asks his players before the final game.
Someone should have replied, "Not like this."
"The Final Season"
One star out of four
Opens today
Starring
Sean Astin as Kent Stock
Powers Boothe as Jim Van Scoyoc
Rachel Leigh Cook as Polly Hudson
Tom Arnold as Burt Akers
Michael Angarano as Mitch Akers
Written by Art D'Alessandro and James Grayford. Produced by Michael Wasserman, Steven Schott, Tony Wilson, D. Parker Widemire Jr. and Herschel Weingrod. Directed by David Mickey Evans. A Yari Film Group release. Rated PG. Running time: 113 minutes.