Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

charlieh14 After not watching this movie for over 10 years, I happened to buy the DVD on a good sale. I haven't stopped watching it since! I'd forgotten how enjoyable this film is! Those negative or low reviews generally do so since they think many parts are predictable. SO WHAT!! Very few movies can more can be unpredictable anyway! This is one of those fun movies you can watch and enjoy over and over. The formula really works in this movie. If you like baseball, you'll like it even more. It's about a clash in cultures and the cast is excellent! Roger Ebert even liked it, predictability and all. I can't believe this only gets a 5.5 overall rating by the members! Tom Selleck is perfectly cast as the aging pro ballplayer who's contract gets sold to a Japanese baseball team and is not thrilled about playing in Japan. All of the supporting cast, especially Dennis Haysbert are also perfect for their roles. Anyone who follows baseball or has lived in Japan can confirm how the foreign ballplayers "gaigin" are treated differently. This film covers this area perfectly. Again, a truly enjoyable movie that's fun to watch over and over.

ray-280 Redo the Oscars from 1992, and this film might get nominated, or even win. It was SO good at capturing its era and dual cultures that it belongs in American and Japanese time capsules. If you wanted to know what living here or there was like back then, this film will show you. As an American, you'll feel like you tagged along for an extended Japanese vacation, and by the end of the film, you'll be a die-hard Dragons fan, as you accept the injection of Japanese tradition and culture into their baseball, much as we have done with our culture in our own game.Jack Elliot (Tom Selleck) is a slumping, aging Detroit Tigers' slugger who is traded to the Dragons, perennial runners-up to the dynastic Yomuri Giants, Japan's answer to the Yankees. The Giants are admired for their success, yet that success also has everyone wanting to surpass them, something which is rarely done. The Dragons' manager recruits Jack as the final piece of the pennant-winning puzzle, and we're left with what could have been Gung Ho on a baseball field, but instead was much more.The casting was outstanding: Selleck proved that with a good script and a character that suits him, he can carry a film as well as he did his television show, and the Japanese cast was equally good, down to Mr. Takagi from Die Hard back as the image-conscious owner. The other actors, including the one who plays the love interest (also the manager's daughter), strong and independent yet simultaneously a believer in Japanese traditions, beyond what was forced on her. She is a proper and supportive girlfriend for Jack. Even her father never tells her not to see him, almost sympathizing with Jack for what he endures from her, and a bit relieved he at least knows the man she has chosen to love.The baseball scenes are great, bolstered immensely by a pre-fame Dennis Haysbert as another American ex-patriate and Jack's western mentor. The usual fish-out-of-water elements are there, and you can almost feel yourself stumbling right along with Jack to fit into a country that doesn't speak our language, and doesn't practice our ways, yet copies everything we do, including our national pastime. one of the funnier scenes occurs when Jack, clutching a magazine, informs his manager that he has learned of the tradition in Japan where you can get drunk and tell off your boss, and it can't be used against you, and exercises that right very humorously. The plots and subplots are tied up neatly at the end, but not too neatly, and nothing concludes unrealistically.To call this a comedy is misguided: it's a pure comedy-drama, or even a drama with good humor. The plot is too deep to dismiss it the way it was by critics as an actor out of his league trying to carry a lightweight film. The situations were amusing, but in their place against a far more serious, profound, and precisely detailed backdrop that results in one of the best films I've ever seen. The baseball cinematography rivals that of For Love Of The Game, for realism.Some say the film is about baseball, or about Japan, but more than anything it seems to be about the workplace, and how people arrive at work from totally different origins, with different agendas, and somehow have to put their differences aside for the good of the company, or the team.A truly great film that never should have had to apologize for itself the way it did when it was in theaters.

lastliberal A couple of baseball flicks on tonight. This was the first and, while it is no great picture, it was worth watching.Tom Selleck plays the predictable Ugly American that thinks he knows it all. He can't accept that, if he really knew it all, he wouldn't have been sent to Japan.Dennis Haybert from 24, The Unit, Jarhead, and Breach tries to help him realize that he needs to get with the program.But, it is the manager's daughter that turns him around and , guess what, he starts to be a team player.Yes, I know that that was so predictable, but is still worth your time. It's no "Natural," but it's OK.

metalrox_2000 I kind of had somewhat high expectations for this movie. I've always thought that Tom Selleck's lesser known movies (ie Runaway and Coma), where well above the ones he had more press for. Maybe the producers should have had a little more knowledge about former major league baseball players who became stars overseas. The majority were players too good for triple a baseball, but not exactly major league matériel. I admire the idea of putting Selle's's character in Japn, versus the cliché of having play in the minors. Sad to say, this movie, much like the title of the post, is stranded at third by a movie that seems to be running on autopilot. I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel, and hopefully, the producers would learn from the mistakes. The premise is just way too unique to be left alone with this uneven flick