User Reviews

Overall, I liked this movie.

The acting was little more than adequate. This was what I call a "Religious Propaganda" movie, which is evidenced by the production and distribution companies. Basically, the movie had a good plot and theme to it, but the problem with religious propaganda directors is that it seems as if they try to make every single scene in the movie to be something powerful. Unfortunately, the result of that is a disjointed movie with scenes that don't mesh well together.

It was no different with this movie. While, overall, it was a great movie, the direction was terrible and it partially came off like having "Gods Word" shoved down your throat. A couple of the most powerful scenes in the movie were diluted by following scenes that kept bringing it up as if to say, "Did you get the point?".... The result of that is that the movie (and those scenes) lost their potency because of constant reiteration.

A great movie will let the audience come to their own conclusions, but this movie like so many other religious propaganda movies didn't allow that to happen, instead, the directors made a forced point in telling us what we should have seen and/or felt. One example of this is at the end of the movie when the Jimmy Easton says, "This wasn't about baseball, was it?" and his Uncle's reply was, "No, no it wasn't."

This movie is worth the watch. There is a great message in the movie, but you sort of have no choice in the matter... you'll see the message because they beat you over the head with it.

Well lets see, Bad writing, bad acting, bad actors, preachy, stiff unnatural delivery. What more can be said about how bad this movie is. If it was between this movie and church service I would go to church. But I won't have to since I got the sermon already in this movie. Look I don't have anything against religion or religion in movies, but when you do have religion in movies you at least have to give it some camouflage or back it up with some excellent acting and this movie does neither. Very basically this movie is Pro ball player who coulda been somebody, who coulda been a contender but an accident steals it all away with an injury. Ex-pro player climbs into a bottle and does the bar circuit for a while having flash backs of his Dad consoling his boyhood losses by saying "Lets Pray." Soon Pastor Godfather shows up to offer a college coaching job that ex-pro doesn't want. Ex-pro gets busted for fighting in a bar and Pastor Godfather bails him out in collusion with the local judge who commits a felony by making ex-pro take the coaching job or go to jail (Its called collusion and Extortion). Ex-pro plays slacker coach and gets Pastor Godfather fired, feels guilty and shazaam! Ex-pro now cares and turns local team into winners, connects with old girlfriend and of course talks a lot about anything can be done through God. Suddenly ex-pro's old injury starts to disappear, team starts winning, ex-pro develops good attitude. Ex-pro takes bad attitude player under his wing and turns him into a winner with religious song and help from God. Ex-pro leads college team to championships. Big championship game ensues while ex-pro gets another pro offer, conflict, resolution, every wins through religion! If you are that kind of person who prays 20 times a day you will probably like this movie even with all its terrible flaws, but I think most people will find it a mediocre movie at VERY best. There are some EXCELLENT religious movies out there, God's Not Dead is an excellent example, but this movie is not in that category I am sorry to say.

My wife rented this movie from a Redbox machine just because it was about baseball. I try to watch all of the baseball movies I can and have had some actual success with movies I have never heard of from Redbox machines. Some better ones in the past have been 'Sugar', and 'The Perfect Game'. This was not among those diamonds in the rough. This has all of the bad cinematography that you would expect from an overtly Christian-made film. I am not going to bash anyone's religion, I myself go to a Nazarene church. I just feel that Christian movies are not of good quality in script, acting or development. This film misses on all three. The story is that a star baseball player's parents die, he gets injured and ends up as a drunk guy mad at the world. He returns to his home town and people who knew him try to get him involved in a baseball coaching position, which he is forced into because he is facing jail time. The development of the story is pretty cliché to say the least. It goes just as you would expect. He plays the "coach who doesn't want to be there" character that is starting to be overdone by now. A humorous thing does happen when he signs an autograph something like "Your dad is stupid". The only other time I laughed in the whole movie was at something that I do not think was supposed to be funny. In a scene where he is drinking, the drink he is drinking is called "Josh Daniels No. 7" instead of "Jack Daniels No. 7". We found that to be hilarious, in a mocking kind of way. There really is no purpose to this film. So a guy whose life fell apart suddenly finds a new life as a coach because of a player on the team who amazingly(by the grace of God?) is exactly the same as himself. This kid's parents both die, he gets drafted by the San Francisco Gold Sox(no seriously, the Gold Sox ha-ha) #12 in the 1st round and he can't be excited for it, just like the coach! Wow! I mean, that is some great writing! At one point in the film, the coach gets an opportunity to return to the San Francisco Gold Sox to play outfield for the rest of the season. He starts to go but then turns it down for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I guess the writers wanted you to know that God wanted him to coach the team in the title game more than live his dream. What kind of moral is that? God wants what is best for us, not to give up our dreams like that. I don't think it would have been selfish for him to go to play in the Majors again. Anyway, as he's driving he stops in the middle of the road, jumps out of his car and just runs. There is really no reason for this scene. He falls down and passes out(in the middle of a highway) and has some kind of weird hallucination dream about his dad telling him he's going to be okay and that they are okay in Heaven(I assume?). Anyway, he wakes up when a hiker finds him and the hiker is not even concerned about his physical condition or trying to get him to a doctor(you find a guy passed out in the middle of the street with a still running car parked in the middle of the street and you aren't even concerned about his well-being at all?!) So the guy goes back to the hometown in Arizona and coaches the team but the kid got hurt and can't play in the title game. Women characters are thrown into the film for virtually no reason and serve almost no purpose in the story lines. This movie just makes you hate your life. I hated myself for having watched it. I can't see any positive message from this film. I mean, the kid succeeded without God(making MLB, playing, being a successful coach before he gets 'saved' in the film). The kid on the team is successful without much belief in God that is ever expressed. His dad yells at him but they eventually make up just before his dad dies(but again without the help of God). To make matters even more ridiculous, the team LOSES the Championship Game; so he gave up his dream of returning to MLB just to coach a team to a loss. This movie, which was intended to be religious propaganda, fails at even promoting the message that you need God to succeed that every other Christian movie tries to do. It fails at everything. This movie is only a 4.2 here on IMDb because I am sure a lot of blind Christians who will like ANYTHING because it is Christian rated it 10 stars. Don't waste your time & money on this one, even if you are a devout Christian and enjoy Christian entertainment.