Directed by Robert Lorenz
Starring Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake, Matthew Lillard, John Goodman
Grade: F

Most people don’t know this and therefore might think this a crazy statement, but the game of baseball is at the forefront of a new war between the young and the old, the newcomers versus the old guard. The old are, understandably, wary of relinquishing their post so they reject the new methods as robbery of the world’s humanity. Meanwhile, the young are overzealous in all their newfound knowledge and can come off a bit pompous. In baseball, specifically, the information age has given us seemingly infinite amounts of data and with it countless new stats and metrics, all designed to further understanding of the game. This terrifies and then enrages, as one tends to follow the other, the old guard. Trouble with the Curve, directed by Robert Lorenz, is the horribly biased movie version of this argument. The film hates technology and anybody who believes it can be used for good is automatically a villain. Insulting to baseball fans, movie watchers, and every single member of this cast, Trouble with the Curve is a manipulative, self-serving, and entirely dishonest film.

The action follows Gus (Clint Eastwood), an aging scout with failing eyesight. He once was the best scout in the business, we know this because we are told this repeatedly just in case we ever doubted. He’s grumpy and dismissive to everyone he meets, though nobody seems bothered by it except his daughter Mickey (Amy Adams), whom he has neglected ever since her mother died when she was six. A big reveal late in the movie, and a disgusting piece of audience manipulation, is that Gus caught some random baseball guy molesting Mickey in a woodshed after a game when she was six and sent her away in order to protect her. Mickey, named after Mickey Mantle because this is a way to establish both that Gus is obsessed with baseball and has no idea to relate to a daughter, is up for a promotion to partner at the law firm she works at. Sound familiar? Probably because that’s the go to premise of any shitty movie where the young, overworked professional must learn a valuable lesson about loving something simple. Anyway, she takes a vacation in the middle of a crucial case, which spoiler alert will cost her that fancy partnership before the movie’s through, to accompany Gus as he scouts a young high school ballplayer. While on this trip, Mickey meets Johnny (Justin Timberlake), a former player who was drafted by her father but after blowing his arm out is trying his hand at scouting. Naturally, they fall in love, though she resists because she must put her career ahead of all relationships. Also, the player they’re scouting is a total piece of shit who has no appreciation for anything, and in the film’s climax Mickey and Gus prove that he has “trouble with the curve,” thus rendering those computer-stat nerds-geeks-assholes-queers into complete frauds and failures and the most vile one of them all gets fired.

As far as the performances go, there is nothing really impressive going on either. Eastwood is clearly on autopilot, grunting and growling his way through every scene. I suspect that Eastwood did this movie as a favor as Lorenz worked as his assistant director for many years and this was his directorial debut. Amy Adams is supposed to be the emotional center of the film, and to her credit she does what she can with the role, but the character is so stock and clichéd that it comes up empty. Timberlake is his usual charming self but only exists in this movie as a plot device. John Goodman is a welcome relief and in his small role as the scouting director of the Atlanta Braves easily gives the best performance. Matthew Lillard is only there to be snaky and I suppose he does that pretty well. You might be thinking to yourself, “hey this is a pretty good cast,” and you’d be right and that’s what makes this movie so infuriating. To assemble a talented and charismatic cast and then reduce them to uninteresting movie clichés is just a bummer.

I won’t go into all the ways this movie also gets the baseball details wrong too, as I’m sure many readers won’t care, but rest assured the way that the talent is scouted and drafted in this movie is absolutely not the way it works in real life (and in what fucking world do the Red Sox get the first overall draft pick? They’d never be bad enough for that). All I’ll say is that this movie fails on virtually every conceivable angle and does not bode well for Robert Lorenz’s directing career. It seems Trouble with the Curve was simply made to be the anti Moneyball, which is fine in its own right, I suppose, but whereas Moneyball certainly had issues of baseball accuracy of its own, at least it was a good movie.