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Movie Review: Bleacher Bums

I saw this on the Tivo, which described it as being a story of various people at a game of a woeful Chicago baseball team, and thought "Is it about the Cubs?" so I got suckered into watching it. It seemed like they didn't have the rights to say it was the cubs, but it very clearly was - ivy-covered walls, last world series win in 1908, a slugger with a last name "Losa", a manual scoreboard, and fans that throw home run balls from the other team back. It is a shame they couldn't use the actual names for the current players. And it was very evident it was a movie based on a play, with the limited number of sets and the distinct transitions between them. It brought back a lot of memories of going to see Cubs games when I was a kid, and it was neat to see them get some of the details right, like the trough-style urinals in the men's bathrooms, even if the bathrooms were too clean. The characters weren't particularly interesting, especially since they all seemed pretty typical stock characters that followed the path you would expect them to over the course of the movie. The "cheerleader" character did bring some excitement to things, but the slapstick chase at the end was not needed. I think the movie was OK if you have a particular fondness for the Cubs or baseball games, perhaps, but I imagine the play is more entertaining if done well. I think the character interactions could be more interesting in that format, since the movie tried to stretch beyond the bleachers by showing game footage and other things that weren't particularly well done.

And the random note is that Dennis Franz and Joe Mantegna were some of the co-authors of the play and apparently appeared in the original production in 1978. I guess the play has had a long life. Probably longer than this movie will have.