Movie review (Hard Ball)

Hard ball Hardball has variously been compared to The Bad News Bears and The Mighty Ducks, but this movie strives to be more hard-hitting than either of those family-friendly, comedic efforts. A more apropos likening might be to Dangerous Minds, the flaccid, Hollywood-ized tale of a teacher who makes a difference to her underprivileged students. Hardball is about a reluctant baseball coach who changes the lives of his pre-teen players even as they change his …

…Hardball doesn't bring anything new or especially interesting to the table. It wants to be a lot of things from a hard-hitting drama about life in the projects to a feel-good story of triumph over adversity, but only does as much as the formula permits. (And the very last scene, which force-feeds closure, is a source of aggravation.) When its list of faults are catalogued, the most serious crime Hardball is guilty of is soft-peddling.