Review - 'Million Dollar Arm' Delivers Pleasant, If Predictable, Entertainment

Disney’s live action movie Million Dollar Arm opens this weekend against some pretty sizable competition in the form of Godzilla, and if you’d asked me a week ago which film I’d be recommending and which I’d enjoy more, I’d probably have guessed the latter. But it’s the sports comedy-drama that won me over, despite its flaws.

Disney’s had past success with these sort of feel-good true-story sports films, including Remember the Titans, The Rookie, and Miracle, all of which benefited from smaller budgets that enhanced the significance of their box office returns. With a focus on the business end of things, Million Dollar Arm plays more like 2012′s Moneyball, but with half the budget and so better chance for a higher profit margin. The concept behind the film is an allegory about the film itself, since Disney is taking a common film genre and style, and adding Indian characters and locales in the sly assumption this will help increase the film’s marketability in India and overseas markets in general. It’s a smart play, and the fact it’s a good movie will probably help the plan work out as intended.Families looking for something new to see with the kids, sports fans, and anyone who just wants an entertaining time without superheroes or monsters will likely find Million Dollar Arm the best for their weekend viewing. It doesn’t need to attract all that much attention to have a successful opening, since it’s $25 million production budget plus perhaps $50 million in markiting cost sets the bar pretty low.

There’s no doubt Godzilla will own the weekend, and Neighbors will have a decent enough follow-up weekend to grab second place. The only question, then, is whether The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will have a larger drop than expected. If Godzilla and Neighbors nab enough of Spidey’s main target audiance(particularly if Godzilla overperforms north of $70 million), and then if Million Dollar Arm pulls away enough of Spidey’s family attendance to both boost itself and sink the wall-crawler further, it’s at least technically possible the sports flick could score a surprise third-place finish, although that’s highly unlikely. Anything north of $12 million will be plenty fine for Million Dollar Arm, and it’s tracking to hit that number or slightly better. If it managed to actually top $15 million (again, unlikely but worth talking about as a “what if”), that would be a pleasant surprise for the studio.

It’s being called clichéd, schmaltzy, and predictable, and at times it is certainly any or all of those things. But it’s also good-hearted, funny, and usually pretty entertaining. Critics seem to be giving it mostly (by a small margin) positive reviews, and I expect audiences will be slightly kinder to it, so I’d guess it’ll enjoy modestly positive word of mouth and could even strike a chord with some folks who wanted a new approach to this standard genre. It probably won’t be a breakout hit like The Blind Side, and nobody’s getting any Oscar nods for this one, but there’s plenty of room for it to make a nice little profit and then enjoy additional success on home entertainment.

Jon Hamm — he of Mad Men fame — plays a sports agent who, with his partner played by Aasif Mandvi (best know to most of you for his work on The Daily Show, and to some of you with particularly good viewing habits as the cynical doctor on Jericho), left lucrative jobs at a larger company to go solo, but who are now facing imminent failure of their venture. Then, in a moment of amusing inspiration, Hamm has an idea: they’ll combine the “anyone can try out and win” concept of the talent show Britain’s Got Talent with the foreign popularity of the sport cricket, and the talent compitionto discover new professional baseball pitchers… in India. The hope is, this contest will help make baseball popular in India and create a market for massive sales of team merchandising, which will turn Hamm’s and Mandvi’s agency into a rousing success. The high profile of the competition alone is enough to garner lots of media attention, and gets some other sports players interested in the little agency as well.

Hamm gives an excellent performance as a man used to comfort and only interested in the success of his business. He hasn’t the time for relationships, nor for sympathy for these youths pulled out of poverty and suddenly thrust into a world they’re unprepared to deal with. Hamm’s conversion from selfish, greedy jerk to a more compassionate man rediscovering his love of sports isn’t rushed, and he even has early changes of heart that give way to backsliding and regret that he tried to care.Madhur Mittal, known best for his role as the older brother in Slumdog Millionaire, and Suraj Sharma, who starred in 2012′s Life of Pi, play the two main Indian characters. These young men try out for the contest and rise through the ranks, attracting the attention and admiration of their communities and ultimately of their entire nation. Meanwhile, they experience culture shock when they travel to the U.S. and see how Hamm’s self-involved, formerly well-off, all-business character really lives. The youths come from different backgrounds and have different approaches to the contest, but their gradual bonding and how they rely on one another to navigate the cultural difficulties they experience in the U.S. is a nice example that both compares and contrasts with the themes of “culture clash” in the rest of the story.

Lake Bell is Hamm’s love interest, a woman in medical school who rents a guest house in Hamm’s back yard. She comes across as an actual real person with personality instead of just a generic prop as most love interests tend to be in these sorts of films. Her relationship with the young Indian kids is a nice touch and provides more authenticity when she confronts Hamm about his treatment of the athletes. This relationship isn’t just a shoehorned angle, either, she’s a real person who was part of the events, it seems. I’ve seen her described as “quirky” and “perpetually happy,” but I don’t think either of those descriptions apply to her at all, and I was particularly glad she wasn’t the cliched “quirky” girlfriend persona so common in films about men who need to overcome rigidity in their personal lives.

Alan Arkin has a relatively small but important role as the lazy but sharp-eared talent scout who helps pick the winning athletes, and there’s a wonderful little moment in a diner between Arkin and Hamm. Bill Paxton is a pitching coach with the improbable but not impossible task of turning the naive Indian kids into baseball players worthy of tryouts for professional teams. These are two actors who could’ve been put to even more effective use, particularly Paxton in light of the task put in front of him. But they’re good with what they have, and there’s already a feeling that the film is 15 to 20 minutes too long, so I doubt much more needed to be done with them anyway.

The story is at its best when it puts the Indian athletes front and center, and focuses on their feelings of responsibility to their families and communities, and their (initially) misplaced sense of loyalty and trust in Hamm. And the India settings likewise add much to the story, with the life-changing potential of the contest brought into sharp focus as the event moves around the country igniting the imagination and often desperation of so many young people and their families.With a very strong first half, the film settles into a more predictable but still overall entertaining second half, and it’s fun to watch as the two narratives — Hamm’s redemption, and the redemption of the young Indian men — converge. Meanwhile, there’s lots of humor, as much about Hamm’s behavior and befuddlement with his new experiences and responsibilities as about the fish-out-of-water aspect of the boys’ story. Mandvi has great banter, and a late scene where he has to just sit and listen as Hamm seemingly puts their necks way out on the chopping block is classic — Mandvi says nothing, but the expression on his face speak volumes. The tryouts themselves are lots of fun, even if we know who will obviously end up winning. I’m glad the film took time to show us into the homes of the families and give us glimpses of how the parents simultaneously held out so much hope for their children’s success yet also feared so much for their safety and spirits.

On the other hand, it’s hard to ignore the obvious fact the story shares one important similarity with Godzilla — both stories would’ve been better if they’d chosen different protagonists. For Million Dollar Arm, just ask yourself who has the more interesting character arc: The white well-off businessman who visits another culture and learns valuable lessons about how to stop being so selfish and appreciate all the great things in his already-very-comfortable life? Or the two impoverished kids from India who suddenly experience the arrival of Major League Baseball in their country and have a rare shot at becoming millionaire athletes, eventually leaving their small communities for the first time in their lives to travel to the U.S.?

I’d have rather seen the entire story from the perspective of the boys. And I feel Hamm’s character would’ve worked far better as a supporting role, without some of the story having to center on less relevant aspects of his daily life, instead of on these kids’ lives and experiences. Indeed, while it’s easy for us to invest emotionally in the two youths’ goals and root for them, we don’t have much to invest in when it comes to Hamm’s arc — he’s a guy used to having a lot of money, who wants his business to be successful so he can continue having a lot of money. His arc just can’t compete with the athletes’, and it’s weird that the film eventually literally acknowledges that fact in the third act.

I’m surprised Disney didn’t see the potential benefits of changing the film’s point of view to that of the Indian youths, since it would certainly be a more unique approach to the feel-good true-story sports genre. Besides comparisons to Remember the Titans and Moneyball, we’d be talking about Slumdog Millionaire, and that’s a comparison offering even more lucrative prospects for the film, not to mention playing even better into the story’s symbolism of its own nature. However, as much as we can — and should — complain about failure to tell these sorts of stories from the more interesting point of view and provide space for voices and personal journeys of people besides white western males, Million Dollar Arm doesn’t lack an Indian perspective. Four of the six primary characters are of Indian descent, and we also get lots of other Indian characters with significant moments in the film. And half of the story is set in communities and cities all across India.It was also frustrating that after so much time and good effort put into setting up Hamm’s emotional limitations and his tendency to mistreat other people when under stress, the story then resorts to a simplistic montage to demonstrate his changes of heart. Letting us actually experience just a few of those moments more thoroughly would’ve made them more meaningful and served the character and story much better. The most important part of how these characters got a second chance and redeemed themselves lies in those crucial interactions that bonded them together and made them decide to rise or fall together, and a montage just doesn’t convey it properly.That said, there’s no shortage of moments of clarity for the characters, and even in this less dramatically impactful form, it still tells a good story and has fun doing so (which most films containing similar mistakes usually end up failing to do). You don’t have to be a sports fan to like this movie, and even when it’s getting predictable you’ll probably find yourself enjoying it anyway. It’s not brilliant or daring, but it’s got genuine heart and offers some new approaches to a pretty cliched genre. It’s a good film if you’re looking for something new and different to see this weekend. And the end credit sequence using actual footage of the real-life people portrayed in the film, including footage of the very first tryouts in India, will drag a smile out of you no matter how cynical you might pretend to be, trust me.