The Sandlot (1993)
You’re killin’ me, Smalls!
THE SUMMARY: A young boy moves to California and finds friendship through baseball, but after he accidentally hits a Babe Ruth-autographed ball over the fence, the gang must recover it from a big scary mastiff. It’s perfectly fine for what it is - a coming-of-age throwback to a simpler time, and classic Americana. But perfectly fine isn’t deep - it’s just watchable.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER JASON: The classic Americana film that embodies everything we remember about America growing up as a little kid: playing outside, avoiding scary houses, and everything we loved about American summers.
JAMIE AND JEANNE’S AI FACESWAP ART:
It’s a shame the fat ginger Blonde is obstructed in this one.
I want more kids, but this is probably too many.
Thanks for the encouragement.
THE BEST:
It’s very generically good: The movie is all wholesome and nothing really objectionable, with plenty of good, even if very generic, themes and messages. Don’t be afraid to try something new. Everybody gets one chance to do something great, so don’t miss it. It’s important to face your fears directly. And other things about as deep as ‘wish it, want it, do it.’ These are all perfectly fine ideas - they’re also perfectly boring. Like brushing your teeth and drinking plenty of water, they’re good rules to live by, but they don’t make compelling stories. If you just want ‘feel good,’ Sandlot probably works. If you want anything more, it isn’t.
The legend of the Beast: The best piece of the movie is the slow build of the Beast’s mystique - how we only see glimpses of him, and he’s first presented as he’d be seen through a scared child’s eyes: larger than life, ferocious, and menacing. The intrigue culminates with Squints telling ‘the legend of the Beast’ at the treehouse sleepover. It’s creative, it’s cartoonish, and most importantly, it’s funny. The slapstick deaths of the crooks are hilarious, as is the narration (120… 173 guys! It’s true!). The Tommy guns are a nice touch too.
Why didn’t you just knock on the door?: When the boys finally talk to Mr. Mertle about the lost Ruth-autographed ball, he asks ‘why didn’t you just knock on the door? I’d have gotten it for you.’
My first reaction was ‘yeah! That would have saved us this entire pointless story.’ But then I thought about it, and that is really the point. Avoiding direct confrontation with our problems is childishness, and causes all sorts of secondary problems. The boys could have solved this issue in five minutes and gone right back to baseball. Instead, they wasted hours and days scheming and strategizing to come up with some far-fetched plan that never worked as well as just confronting the problem directly. There’s a reason we’re watching kids learn this lesson - it’s because that’s when it’s appropriate to learn it. If we’re still building baseball-grabbing Beast-avoiding robots in our adult years instead of just asking to get the ball back, that’s a problem.
Everybody gets one chance to do something great.
FOR-EV-ER!
THE WORST:
Okay, but… so what?: I’m not here to dump on The Sandlot. It’s perfectly watchable. It’s perfectly wholesome. It’s perfectly enjoyable. But upon finishing it for the first time in my adult life, I’m left thinking ‘okay cool… but so what?’ They got the ball back, they learned a generic lesson or two, and then they went their separate ways. That’s the story of pretty much everyone’s childhood. It’s not anything special or interesting. And there’s little of philosophical or moral interest to it. It’s just nostalgia, but I guess that’s the point.
To give that point as much credit as I can, I suppose we could use some of what that nostalgia longs for. Good neighbors. Family life. Communities safe enough for kids to run around unaccompanied and come back home to dinner unmolested. There isn’t a thing wrong with any of that - it’s just not particularly captivating, either. It’s like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch - it’s classic, it’s nourishing, and almost everyone likes it. But it’s not a topic of conversation later.
How old is Benny in the majors?: This is not a point for which I dock Wickies, just one of curiosity: how freaking old is Benny when he’s playing for the Dodgers at the end of the movie? In the main story, Scotty and Benny are somewhere between 11 and 14 years old (I’ve seen different claims from various sources, but within that window). Let’s go as young as possible and say they’re all 11 years old in 1962, though Benny clearly isn’t. The end of the movie flashes forward to Scotty as a Dodgers broadcaster and Benny as a Dodgers player stealing home to win the game… in the present day, circa 1993? Benny is stealing home as at least a 42-year-old?
Even if the scene at the end isn’t supposed to be 1993, and some time in the ‘80s or something, Scotty is pretty clearly a middle-aged man on the mic. He’s getting gray hairs. And Benny is older than he is. How is Benny defying time to play for the Dodgers at all at this age, let alone how does he still have the speed to steal home, which is very rarely done?
In fairness, the oldest MLB players in 2023 were close to 42, but none of these guys are holding on to pinch runner speed. They’re still in the league for other skills.
The Jet stole time, actually - this doesn’t add up.
THE RATING: 3/5 Wickies. It’s one of the most okay movies I’ve seen in a long time. Very little to hate outright, but not a movie that will occupy any time in my mind.
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NEXT WEEK: Kelly’s Heroes (1970)
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