Did ‘Trouble With the Curve’ kill baseball movies?
Clint’s baseball movie struck out. Are sports movies now doomed to the art house?
- Warner Brothers
- Trouble with Troubles
Clocking in at 52% “Rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and striking out with a close, but disappointing third place box office showing, Clint Eastwood’s Trouble With the Curve did little to shake the notion, posited by Indiewire’s Gabe Toro, that “baseball generally doesn’t draw. Despite the number of classics that have emerged from the most cinematic of sports.”
Could a mediocre opening, coupled with baseball’s lack of play overseas (other than Japan), spell doom for baseball movies?
Toro continues, “Curve spotlights a baseball scout, an insular, nerdy profession that seems to run counter to the attitudes towards Eastwood, the Last Hard Man. Audiences flocked to boxing movie Million Dollar Baby once the strong accolades came in (and because of Morgan Freeman’s delicious caramel voice), but Gran Torino very clearly tapped into the primal appeal of Eastwood as a take-no-prisoners shit-kicker. To most of the audience who enjoyed that film, Clint starring in Curve as a cranky old codger in a zero-violence setting probably held little appeal.”
While some speculate the Clint’s infamous RNC speech affected the box office—insert your own empty chair joke here—others like Paul Dergarabedian, analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com, postulate that, “It probably was offset by the attention his appearance drew to the movie among conservatives...Whatever he lost on the left, he gained on the right.”
Once upon a time, baseball was the national pastime. (Now it has been supplanted by arguing about NFL replacement refs.)
The sport itself once set the stage for epic, timeless stories.
Baseball mattered.
People would actually come to baseball games. AND baseball movies.
Perhaps the biggest sign that baseball movies, and sports movies as a whole, have migrated out of the main stream into the fringes is this: