Butler's Cinema Scene

Amy Adams. Clint Eastwood

“TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE”  My rating: C (Opens wide on Sept. 21)

111 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

For the last 30 years or so Clint Eastwood has been one of America’s best filmmakers.

It’s hard to argue with a resume that includes “Mystic River,” “Flags of Our Fathers,” “Letters from Iwo Jima,” “Hereafter,” “Invictus,” “J. Edgar” and “Million Dollar Baby.”

But “Trouble With the Curve” will not go down as one of Clint’s better efforts.

A sports/family drama movie with a made-for-TV sensibility, “Trouble With the Curve” wastes a remarkably deep cast on a piffling of a premise.

It casts Eastwood once again as a crabby old man (they could have called it “Gran Torino Redux”), a stock character that by now is badly frayed around the edges.

And, most depressing of all, Eastwood didn’t direct it. Though it was made by Malpaso, his production company, Eastwood only acts in the film. Behind the camera is Robert Lorenz, an assistant director on many of Eastwood’s films who here finally gets to run the show.

Gus (Eastwood) is a long-time scout for the Atlanta Braves. We encounter him one morning as he creaks his way out of bed and stands over the toilet, where he mutters imprecations against his uncooperative bladder.

Gus is a crusty guy who never wastes a word when a grunt will suffice. In other words, classic Eastwood.

Adams, Eastwood, Timberlake

The rest of the baseball world has moved on. Now with a tap of a key a computer program provides statistical analysis of any player. Gus, on the other hand, prefers to judge talent by the sound the bat makes when it connects with a fastball.

The Braves’ director of scouting (John Goodman)  still has faith in Gus’ gut instincts, but a smarmily ambitious numbers-cruncher (Matthew Lillard) is trying to convince the brass that Gus has outlived his usefulness.

Meanwhile Gus ignores the fact that his eyesight is rapidly deteriorating. This would be handicap enough for a baseball scout, but it’s also a public safety issue given that Gus insists on driving himself to college, high school and minor-league games all over the South.

Most of the picture unfolds on the road where Gus is checking out a high school phenom with a Babe Ruth-ish battering average and the girth to match.

He’s joined on this trip by his daughter Mickey (Amy Adams), a high-powered lawyer who puts her practice on hold to watch over her errant dad. Father and daughter have been borderline estranged for years, and Gus is none too happy to have his own babysitter.

At least Mickey knows her way around the game, having spent her formative years being dragged from one ball field to another by her widowed dad. She can more than hold her own when it comes to baseball trivia slapdowns with Johnny (Justin Timberlake), a one-time big league pitcher now scouting for the Red Sox.

Gee, d’ya think they’ll fall in love?

Randy Brown’s screenplay (his first produced effort…and it shows) is wholly predictable, signaling its intentions way in advance. And his proffering of Psych 101 explanations of Gus and Mickey’s love/hate relationship is laughably shallow.

Weird thing is, I like just about everybody in this film. Good perfs all around.

But the film itself?  A strikeout.

| Robert W. Butler