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'The Rookie' majors in restraint
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 29, 2002
The Rookie (G)
[Photo: Disney]
Dennis Quaid plays Jim Morris in The Rookie, the heartwarming true story of a teacher and baseball coach who becomes a rookie with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
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Dennis Quaid does a nice imitation of a baseball pitcher in a story with a Tampa Bay Devil Rays angle. He plays Jim Morris, a middle-age high school teacher and coach who promises he'll audition for the big leagues if his team wins a championship. Morris lost the bet, but won a contract with the Devil Rays, becoming the second-oldest pro baseball rookie ever.
First impressions: "Like My Dog Skip a couple of years ago, The Rookie proves that a good story with sensitive issues can be told in relatively wholesome terms, sanitized but not shortchanged. But that restraint is part of the film's charm; the longer it succeeds clean, the more willing we become to overlook the glitches.
"Hancock's depiction of rural Texas life is vivid, with dusty ball fields and cordially eccentric gossips. But an hour passes before Morris gets his major league shot and the movie starts being about a rookie and not amateurs."
Second thoughts: How ironic that The Rookie became one of the most successful baseball movies ever ($75.5-million at the box office) in a year when major league ballplayers threaten to strike.
Rental audience: All ages, and you don't have to be a baseball fan to like it.
Rent it if you enjoy: Bang the Drum Slowly, The Natural, Devil Rays highlights.
Queen of the Damned (R)
[Photo: Warner Bros. ]
Akasha (Aaliyah) and Lestat (Stuart Townsend) raise few chills in Queen of the Damned.
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Anne Rice -- at least her macabre literary creations -- must be howling. This MTV-friendly adaptation of her novel shows the vampire Lestat (Stuart Townsend) becoming a modern-day rock star with a plan to resurrect a supreme bloodsucker (pop star Aaliyah) from the dead. The fact that Aaliyah died last year in an airplane crash lends her scenes a particularly bad aftertaste.
First impressions: "Not a flattering epitaph. Queen of the Damned is a crass attempt to cash in on (Aaliyah's) death, displaying her prominently in advertisements, then making fans wait nearly an hour for a good look at her character.
"Aaliyah is in the movie for about only 15 minutes total doing one of three things: seductively sashaying in a skimpy costume, hissing through bogus, bloody fangs, or struggling with one of those cliched Transylvanian accents. Never has an end-credit memorial felt so hollow.
"Queen of the Damned is warmed-over Rice, like watching the vastly superior Interview with the Vampire performed in summer stock theater."
Second thoughts: My sincere apologies to all summer stock theater performers.
Rental audience: Aaliyah mourners, Goth posers, Rice readers seeking something to gripe about.
Rent it if you enjoy: Grave-robbing.
High Crimes (PG-13)
A successful lawyer (Ashley Judd) is way out of her legal league when her husband (Jim Caviezel), a former U.S. Marine, is arrested for alleged wartime atrocities. She hires a former military attorney (Morgan Freeman) to investigate, uncovering a conspiracy the audience sniffs out faster than the detectives.
First impressions: "The two co-stars of 1997's Kiss the Girls have an easygoing chemistry. Their performances, and those of Caviezel (Angel Eyes) and the irrepressible Amanda Peet (The Whole Nine Yards), as Claire's wayward, flirtatious little sister, help compensate for an overlong script that's packed with implausible circumstances and coincidences." (Philip Booth, St. Petersburg Times staff writer)
Second thoughts: Maybe Misdemeanors would have been a better title.
Rental audience: Judd watchers, Freeman admirers and anyone caring enough to correctly pronounce and spell "Caviezel."
Rent it if you enjoy: A Few Good Men, Rules of Engagement.
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