If I had to describe this movie in one word, it would be “meh”; the director of Million Dollar Arm, Craig Gillespie, obviously worked very hard to put this production together. But, I feel like, despite its extraordinary story, the execution of the movie and the central themes that it focused on, were less than subpar, and became almost formulaic.
Million Dollar Arm starts in a dramatic fashion. No time wasted in fluffy introductions or vague mystery scenes, the first thing that viewers see is independent sports agent J.B. Bernstein (Jon Hamm) and his partner Ash Vasudevan (Aasif Mandvi) losing a huge deal with a major football star, Popo Vanuatu (Rey Maualuga). Desperate to save their failing business, J.B. and Ash wrack their brains for ideas, when, watching a game of cricket, they think of it. INDIA! The world’s largest untapped market, full of cricket bowlers ready to be converted into baseball pitchers. And, after approaching investor Will Chang (Tzi Ma), they start the newest most exciting reality contest in India, the Million Dollar Arm! The movie is essentially split into two parts. The first being when J.B. travels to India in an effort to find the fastest pitchers, and the second, where he returns home and struggles with balancing the responsibility of taking care of young contest winners Rinku Singh (Suraj Sharma) and Dinesh Patel (Madhur Mittal), along with their well-meaning translator Amit Rohan (Pitobash Tripathy), and keeping his business alive. The classic morals or money dilemma.
This story arc was exceptionally well executed, if a little dramatic. Looking at the conflict, the story of Rinku and Dinesh, was the most beautiful part of the movie. I love how the movie industry is looking out into other cultures and the fact that they didn’t cut out the “slice of life” portions. But, what keeps this from being a five star movie for me, other than the fact that it was too formulaic (I’ll discuss that later), is two things.
First, one huge dislike for me in this movie was the romantic interest of J.B. Bernstein, Brenda Fenwick (Lake Bell). All of the romance portions in the movie felt forced and interrupted the flow of the story for me. One minute I’d be absorbed in the story, hoping that the next kid would throw a good ball, and then the next I’d be abruptly jerked out of the world of the movie by some awkward flirting. It honestly didn’t work for me until near the very end, when she acts as a sort of mediator and a friend to Rinku and Dinesh.
Second, Chang, the evil investor. He was a completely flat character for me; the only motivation that the story gave to us for his actions were “he’s rich, he can do whatever he wants”, as if that’s supposed to satisfy us. Gillespie turned Chang into your typical evil corporate villain, appealing to the prejudice of the masses so we don’t question Chang’s motivations. Why did Chang do this? Answer: DUH, he’s rich, that automatically means he’s evil. Everybody has a reason for doing things and he felt like a plot device in the movie rather than an actual person.
All in all, Million Dollar Arm was a good movie. But it wasn’t much better than average. In fact, it was almost too average. Business goes down, converting some poor heathens into superstars, getting the girl, becoming rich, defeating the evil corporate mastermind, it’s your classic “underdog” story. And honestly? Overdone, and super dramatic. Instead of romanticising the heroics and the genius of J.B. Bernstein, maybe what Disney should have focused on was filming a stunning documentary about the very true story of two very extraordinary people.
★★★☆☆
“Meh.”
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