This movie is 80% about sex/relationships and then the other 20% happens to be about baseball.
1988, truly one of the best movie years. Bull Durham, Rain Man, Heathers, and Midnight Run are some of the best referenced movies for the year of ‘88. Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon highlight the “RomDram” along with Tim Robbins. While the focus of the story is about Ebby Calvin ‘Nuke’ LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) in the beginning of the movie, Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), steals the spotlight down the road and is the main character.
The story goes like this: Hotshot MLB pitcher prospect Ebby Calvin LaLoosh is off the rails and needs guidance to become a star. With the help of minor league veteran Crash Davis, his dream can be granted. But once influenced by the veteran groupie Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), his vision on what’s best is derailed. Crash’s interest in Annie creates a second story for this film while the other is about how ‘Nuke’ will navigate the road from Triple A to “the show.” His dilemma throughout the movie is controlling his inconsistency while trying to take advice from both Annie and Crash to better it. Crash leads ‘Nuke’ to success on the mound but Annie selecting him as her recruit pulls his attention away from baseball.
The Pros
Lots of good little funny moments. A character that I didn’t mention that kept making me smirk was one of Nuke and Crash’s managers. Larry (Robert Wuhl) kept yelling out witty pump up comments at either Nuke when he pitched or Crash when he was batting. In the “cocksu****” scene is an example of this. I’m not sure why but when Larry yells “Super Nuke! Super Nuke! LaLoosh! L-A Loosh!” at Nuke it just makes me smirk because the way he talks is hilarious. If you read my reviews somewhat often then you’ll know that I’m always out there for the small pros in a movie and that is definitely one of them. Check out the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8olTfKZnFiM
I think all my pros in this movie stem from the scenes and the acting. But that’s interesting because I also didn’t like some of the acting in Bull Durham. The scenes I’m gonna reference here are similar to each other, one is when Nuke rejects the curveball, and the other is when he rejects the fastball and goes deuce instead. Crash shows his teaching is two-faced. If Nuke wants to shake off his catcher signs then he can, but the side effect is the batter being told the pitch he’s gonna throw. Some great lines come out of the first scene: Crash tells Nuke to hold the ball like an egg and after Crash tells the hitter what the pitch is, he crushes it. Then Nuke says to Crash “I held it like an egg” and Crash quickly responds “Yeah and he scrambled the son of a bitch.” The writing for this movie had me very impressed and it’s just one of those films that’s blasted on youtube for scene uploads of fans’ favorite quotes and scenes. Here’s the link to the scene so you can better understand why I like it so much: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG_2Orbkp0I
Generally in Bull Durham you can count on Kevin Costner having breakout scenes where his lines are just either so unique, like where he explains to Annie early in the movie what he believes, or they’re just downright hilarious like the “cocksu****” scene.
The Cons
I wasn’t a fan of the plot of this movie. Create this movie with the same cast, same character chemistry but just with a different plot. A plot is a big thing to dislike in a movie but that is what this movie did not nail. The writing, cast, and scenes were done well judging them respectively, but judged all in the same picture combined? not so much. I never really understood Crash’s interest in Annie and how the whole groupie thing fit in. I found Annie’s character kind of redundant. This movie could literally have been about just Crash and Ebby and their battle against LaLoosh’s self created adversity, and it would’ve made more sense instead of involving Annie. Think about that for a while.
My last critique would be the acting in the scene with the managers of the Durham Bulls bringing in Crash for his new job with Ebby. It’s rare that I catch poor acting, but the managers were very subpar for some reason. I can’t really explain why because I’ve never taken acting classes, but they just felt shallow. Not a huge critique but just a little thing I noticed early in the movie.
“Happy to be here and I hope I can help the ball club, you know I just wanna give it my best shot and good lord willing thing will work out. You know you gotta play ‘em one game at a time though, Ray Anne right? That’s a beautiful name- that greek? *Shakes head no* that’s a beautiful name though, there’s a great song by Motley Crue do you know- ‘Ray anne she’s a stay in’, anyway good friend of mine used to say ‘It’s a very simple game, you throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes… it rains… think about that for a while.” Wise words from Nuke. The Shobe Score is a 72.