Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

caseynicholson I watched this movie with a church group recently, and I found it to be a really great family friendly movie.The film chronicles the story of a Little League team from Monterrey, Mexico in the 1950's that improbably makes it to the Little League World Series and plays against teams from the United States. It features a strong faith component, is rated PG, and is very family oriented and kid friendly. One of the especially good aspects of the film is its strong promotion of equal rights, as the film does a good job presenting topics of race and racism in a constructive way. This movie is a great film to introduce your children to this tough topic, especially if your family is white. The movie provides ample opportunity for discussion about topics such as the history of segregation and the treatment of immigrants and people of color, and introduces those topics in a way that is at one and the same time poignant and yet also kid friendly.I found the film to also be well made from the standpoint of filmmaking itself--the script, plot, acting, and cinematography are all very well done. All in all I find this movie to be top notch, and as such I've given it 8/10 stars--my go-to designation for a film that is well made and enjoyable, but just a shade below the near perfect scores of 9 or 10 that I tend to reserve for my all time favorites. Despite it not quite meeting that criteria, it's nevertheless a wonderful movie that the whole family is sure to enjoy. And if nothing else, it's funny to see Cheech Marin play the role of a Catholic priest for two hours!

Tss5078 Based on a true story and set in the small of town of Monterrey, Mexico, during the 1950, a group of kids obsessed with baseball, dream to form a team and play in the Little League World Series. The problem is, that not only don't the kids know how to play, but they don't have a coach or even a field. Until one day, the kids encounter a former St. Louis Cardinals prospect, Carlos Faz (Clifton Collins), who takes on the nearly impossible task of preparing the kids to play in the tournament. The Perfect Game is very inspirational and the kids are adorable, but the film is severely lacking the usual characteristics of a sports film. It's the kids that make the movie, earning your admiration, while making you laugh and cry at the same time, but as a baseball fan, I expect some kind of sports action to be associated with a film like this. All the on field scenes are turned into montages of kids hitting, catching, and throwing, but there are no specifics or real-time game intensity. It's this seemingly small element, that prevents a good film from becoming a great one. Clifton Collins stars as coach Faz and gives a great performance. Collins is an actor I generally don't like, I find that he doesn't fit into many of his roles, but he really surprises me by being everything these kids needed and more. The lead child star is Jake T. Austin, who is now a nineteen year old heart-throb on the ABC family show, The Fosters. I've never seen him in anything before, but it was amazing to think he was only twelve years old when this film was made, because he was the strongest member of the cast. Austin was emotionally charged and was the kid that I wanted to see succeed the most. The film is presented as a sports movie, about the first international team to play in the Little League World Series Tournament. However, it is less of a sports movie and more of a drama about what the kids had to do just to get there and the hardships they faced once they were there. I was disappointed by the lack of real-time sports action, but impressed by the performance of the young cast and what they had to face during such a racial charged time in American history.

f. baez The Perfect Game is a nice, feel-good, crowd-pleasing, human values, baseball-packed movie. It is, indeed, based on a true story, but the fictional elements are so heavy and full of stereotypes, that they become a burden for the viewer and for the movie itself. The odd thing about it all is that some of the things that seem the most incredible are true. Yet still, a key character in the story -a Gringo- is left out of it. Why?Here come the spoilers.Something true. The basic line of the story is true. The 13 straight games won by the kids from Monterrey. The perfect game pitched by Àngel Macías -I watched him play as an outfielder for Poza Rica 7 years later-, some key plays. Things that may ring as an exaggeration are also true. Coach César Faz had been a bat-boy for the St.Louis Browns, the kids did cross the US- Mexico line walking in their baseball uniforms(it was a bridge, though); they ran against some racist behavior; there was an attempt to deport them in Biloxi, as their visas had expired; they were given discounts and even a free meal in local restaurants, as their legend grew; they ran out of money and depended on a fund raising effort in Monterrey; the uniforms they were offered for the final game were way too big for them; most of them were working class kids and even the relationship between coach César Faz and María is true. The little players did meet President Eisenhower and the Brooklyn Dodgers. This was more than enough to make a sound film.Something false. You don't make a baseball team in four weeks. The Liga Pequeña Industrial had been set four years prior to the championship. It was a proper Little League, with a proper field and stadium and they, of course, knew what a baseball looked like. The team had been playing together so long that they wore in 1957 the same uniform they had used in 1956 -when they beat other leagues in Monterrey-. Monterrey was an industrial city of half a million people, not a semi-rural town with a steel mill in the middle of nowhere, and baseball was the main sport played over there -in 1957 it had a strong team in the Mexican Baseball League, but not a first division soccer team-. César Faz was a US-born, after being deemed too short for MLB, decided to make a career as a manager. He coached Nuevo León State team to the National finals the year before, and was hired -nominally as a worker in FAMA machinery factory- to take the 12 year olds to the World Championship. There were 14 players, not 9, and there was no priest with them -even though it is said that they were religious children. And, at their arrival from the US, they were received by thousands of admirers both in Mexico City and in Monterrey. Something missing. One of the key men behind the Mexican kids' victory was an American, Harold "Lucky" Haskins, a former war-hero who helped fund, with his personal money, the Liga Pequeña Industrial, the working-class Little League where the champions came from. It was Haskins who gave them gloves, bats and uniforms, it was him who intervened to clear the visa problem for the children. It was him, the manager of FAMA machinery factory, who paid Faz. Why is he left out? Probably because he was a bigamist -not good for a religion oriented movie-, or probably because his intervention would prevent a couple of Hollywood clichés from appearing. Anyway, I felt it was an injustice done to a good man.

mdixon this isn't a good movie, it seems as if it's made by someone that's seen all the archetypal feel-good, rags-to-riches movies then tried his hand at making one without understanding how the good ones actually work. in this genre "the blind side" is fantastic, "rudy" superb, even "the sandlot" is head and shoulders above this.the main problem with this movie is that it has the gruff embittered coach who didn't really want to be, check, the grandfatherly advice giver, check, a side love interest, check, impoverished kids who want to beat the odds, check - but when strung together as things we want to cheer for it falls completely flat. everything is too shallow.I mean I know as viewers we're supposed to do xyz at abc but the movie's job is to lead us to those points which make us want to reflexively cheer. this movie seems to use those recognizable spots simply as the indication that "ok audience, here's where you cheer". that's not how it works. things in this movie seem to just happen for no real reason except the feel-good format requires them. the build-up scenes seem disjointed/incomplete so there's no build-ups, the pay-offs ("hurray" "cheer" "you go!") appear out of nowhere making them utterly unsatisfying because they were unexpected.I had very little expectation other than to watch something fun and marginally gratifying for a couple hours but even with such a low bar this movie fails. I should add that I could only take a little over half of this movie but in fairness how many times can one watch something lousy saying "this stinks, I hope it gets better; this stinks, I hope it gets better; this stinks... the end"?