Million Dollar Arm

In 2008, Rinku Singh (Suraj Sharma) and Dinesh Patel (Madhur Mittal) were the first Indian athletes to be signed to a professional American sports team after being discovered through a reality show competition called "Million Dollar Arm", ran by sports agent JB Bernstein (Jon Hamm). But before they were signed, they had less than a year to learn how to play baseball, and now we have this movie.

It's pretty cut and dry, with the fish-out-of-water scenario and the unlikely bonding that comes with it. The sad part about this movie, is that Disney didn't seem to try with the marketing, because literally, the entire movie is shown in the trailers, except for the end. Not only is the movie as predictable as the Heat winning the NBA finals, it doesn't seem to do the players justice.

The characters aren't necessarily flat, but merely 2 dimensional. It's enough for someone to care about them, but not enough for anyone to become more interested in this story. The comic relief carries the movie, but everything else seems to be lacking significantly. It's fun to see Rinku and Dinesh, along with Amit Rohan (Pitobash), adapt to America. But their progress in terms of baseball and their relationship with JB feel underplayed.

Pacing is a bit of an issue, because these two players don't come to America until about halfway through the movie. It's like watching 42 if Harrison Ford had spent half the movie looking for Jackie Robinson. Alan Arkin is in this movie for like fifteen minutes, which is just sort of what he does nowadays. He's actually not his usual funny self in this outside of a few one-liners. He literally walks out of the film, having served his purpose for the time.

The obligatory romance between JB and his tenant Brenda (Lake Bell) isn't necessarily refreshing, but it's tolerable. Since Bell's character is actively involved with the other characters, it doesn't feel like the usual forced romance. She keeps the plot moving and JB a relatively interesting protagonist. Aasif Mandvi is entertaining, but could be completely removed from the movie and hardly anything would change.

I'll admit, I laughed a few times, and I had a smile on my face for a lot of the movie. But as someone with a real soft spot for sports films, this felt unnecessary. Any knowledge of baseball isn't needed for this movie, and neither is an interest in India. The truth is, this movie is just Jerry Maguire, except this actually happened. The stakes don't even feel that high in the end, which is why most sports movies take place after the players are signed. There's not a lot to say about this movie, because everything is so middle of the road, there's not much to complain about.

Baseball movie: C+

Average: B