Starring: Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman, Matthew Lillard
Director: Robert Lorenz
Running Time: 111 minutes
Released Out NowGus (Eastwood) is a baseball scout reaching the twilight of his career. His eye-sight is failing and he’s being out-paced by younger go-getters such as Philip (Matthew Lillard) who feel there’s more sense looking at statistics than actually venturing out and watching the game being played. His middle-management boss Pete (John Goodman) is supporting him the best he can and sends him out on the road to evaluate a young player that seems to be the target of a lot of rival clubs. Meanwhile Gus’s daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) is on the cusp of a move up the corporate ladder and a partnership at her law firm, so it would hardly be the best time to join her father on the road. However Pete asks her for the favour, to perhaps keep Gus from sabotaging his own ‘last chance’… and so estranged father and daughter hit the highways and the ballparks. But will player-turned-scout Johnny (Justin Timberlake) help them solve the family-dynamic or merely complicate it further?
Trouble with the Curve is the sort of film unlikely to actually cause any real trouble at all. A perfectly acceptable and diverting -enough movie, it stays well within the safe, old, familiar places and meanders a tried-and-tested route with all the requisite archetypes and characters you’d expect. The conflicts are clearly set-out, the solutions and outcome fairly obvious and audiences will clearly be able who to cheer for and for whom to hiss-and-boo when the time comes.
Essentially this is an Eastwood who is now a dab hand at the rise-and-repeat ‘irascible old-timer’, scowling like a curmudgeonly cul-de-sac’d Judge Dredd and cursing under his breath as much as a 12A certificate will allow. That’s not to say he doesn’t do it well, but there’s a certain feeling that the screen veteran has made the deliberate decision to play it safe and ( to use an appropriate sporting metaphor) avoid the fastballs, merely getting to first base rather than looking for a home-run.
Amy Adams is another solid performer, able to handle anything that is thrown her way, but there are no curveballs here and she charms her way through a role of a tomboy-made-success-story, but without surrendering an engaging femininity. Justin Timberlake is getting well-deserved notices for his recent cinematic outings and his young-and-cocky scout is imbued with enough equal charm to hold his own within the star line-up.
No real surprises here then and a distinct feeling that the film will probably do better on a DVD release, but there’s nothing wrong with a formulaic feel-good outing and Trouble with the Curve should appeal to more than the average sports-fan and the American pass-time that stays firmly at its heart…
3/5
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