Trouble with the Curve (2012)

review, recensie, bespreking

A McDonalds hamburger. That’s the first thing I thought of after seeing Trouble with the Curve during the 7th PAC festival in which movies are previewed which will be released over here in the coming months. All of movies were announced ahead of time except this one. I was hoping I’d get a chance to already see Looper, The Master or Killing Them Softly. So a movie about baseball was not something I was expecting, but since the movie has some well-known actors like Clint Eastwood, John Goodman, Robert Patrick, Justin Timberlake and actress Amy Adams I was interested to see it.

Clint Eastwood plays the role of Gus, an old grumpy man (the type of role he’s been playing for a while) who works as a scout for the Atlanta Braves. He’s been in the business for years and hates computers and statistics. He’s convinced you can only find out if someone has talent by watching them play. It’s up to him to find new talent, but as he’s getting older just watching a game is a problem. His eyes are getting worse and he refuses to have it properly examined. As his contract is almost running out he has to prove that he’s still got it. His best friend Pete (John Goodman) sees he’s having trouble and convinces Mickey (Amy Adams), the daughter of Gus, to travel with him so she can help him. Mickey is a very succesful lawyer who’s on the brink of becoming partner at the firm she’s working, so she has to balance her time between a case that can make or break her career and her father (with whom she has some issues).

You might be wondering why I had to think of a hamburger when I saw this, but it’s easy to explain. Trouble with the Curve is a typical Hollywood production which never has any surprises in store, you just know when you go and see this what to expect. It has elements you’ll come to expect like drama between the father and daughter, a love story, and some political games which have to end in a face-off. Add a splash of humor and your Hollywood burger is ready. Don’t get me wrong, everything in this movie is done right and the acting is good as well, but it just didn’t manage to make my heart beat any faster. Trouble with the Curve isn’t a bad movie, but I’d rather have went for a different restaurant where I didn’t know in advance what would be on my plate.

Score: 6

19 thoughts on “Trouble with the Curve (2012)

  1. Nice review. I’m still planning on tasting this burger but I’ve been to the theaters twice since its release and ended up seeing something else instead. Looks like I’ll be waiting for the DVD.

  2. This sounds more like a rental to me from the looks of it. Ahah, seems like Hollywood’s been cooking too many burgers some of them are becoming stale.

  3. I like baseball movies and was looking forward to Moneyball and then this. I ended up being disappointed by Moneyball…it made too much of the Moneyball tactic and not enough of Oakland’s quality pitching staff…and by the looks of things I’m going to be disappointed by this too.

  4. It’s funny that you have not seen cinematic classic Metropolis, yet had no trouble sitting through tripe like Trouble with the Curve….to be fair the movie did have that famous thespian Justin Timberlake, so I can see that it was tough to stay away.

    • Well, there are tons of classic movies I still haven’t come around to seeing. Metropolis being one because of its length. As I state in my review (which you might have missed) it was part of a festival. If it wasn’t I probably would have checked it out once it was out on DVD, but it was an ok movie after seeing some very dark movies (Amour, The Hunt).

Leave a Reply to sati Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.