Bull Durham Reviews

Romance, sex, religion, baseball, Bull Durham argues that they’re all one and the same. This isn’t some story about a Major Leaguer or a scrappy up-start; this is a down and dirty look at those stuck in the part-time. Jamming together equal parts sports movie with romantic comedy, Bull Durham finds the great American pastime in lusty and robust health.

Bull Durham gets a lot right, so we can forgive it, even embrace it, when it starts to play out like the fantasies of the writer. The braggadocio and salty language of the locker room feels real and lived in. The fact that this movie gives the lie to the “healing powers” of the sport is wonderful, showing instead how the obsession begins to overcome all other aspects of their life. Who cares if a poetry reading incredibly sexy baseball whisper/groupie is pure invention, I say thank god for her. Annie Savoy is a great character, and probably the most interesting one of the three leads.

Kevin Costner’s wise veteran is a salt-of-the-earth type, while Tim Robbins’s cocksure upstart pitcher is pure mush-brains, buts it’s Susan Sarandon’s Walt Whitman quoting seductress that walks away with the movie. Her character could have easily dipped into a sad case study of someone unable to face the march of time, but Sarandon gives Annie a spark of life and a genuine love for all things baseball. Her one love affair a season, during which she teaches the prospective players how to be great, is of course complicated by the presence of Costner. That the film is a love triangle as much as it is a knowing love letter to baseball should clue you in to where everyone lands in the end.

Yet it’s still a satisfying journey with these three people. Sure, Robbins is pure comic gold as the dumbest and least interesting of the three, but he’s still worth spending time with as he transitions from braggart to someone of more substance, if not too much more mind. It’s only mildly ironic that Robbins and Sarandon began their decades long love affair, because she and Costner have an erotic spark that threatens to ignite the celluloid every moment that they’re in the same frame. These are great people to spend time with, ones, who have had hard knocks done to them by life, but still find great love and joy in their shared passion.

But Bull Durham is considered one of the best sports movies because of the minor key moments which ring as truth. Minor League players being dropped and promised coaching jobs as a cushion for the harsh impact feel lived in. These type of acute observations only make the film more enjoyable and warm. It’s easy to forgive, even ignore, that the movie may be running a tad too long and getting a little flabby as it rushes towards its ending, but dammit it’s hard to say goodbye to these characters and the genuine amount of love and respect the film has for its subjects.

Throughout his career Kevin Costner has made 3 baseball movies and, in my opinion, this one was easily the best of them and, actually, pretty much the only one I actually really enjoyed. Indeed, ‘For Love of the Game’ was universally panned and was pretty lame but ‘Field of Dreams’, usually considered the best of the bunch, was actually rather underwhelming. Anyway, coming back to our main feature, I thought that Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon were both pretty good and Costner has never been better than when playing such melancholic characters. Furthermore, there was an interesting grittiness and I liked how realistic the movie looked and sounded. Indeed, the characters were really three dimensional and I enjoyed the fact that the story was down to earth and entertaining at the same time. Unfortunately, I wasn't so thrilled by Tim Robbins whose performance was too over of the top and it didn't really fit the tone of the movie. Still, even though it was nothing really amazing, I thought it was a pretty good sport feature, probably one of the best I have seen as a matter of fact and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), a groupie who has affairs with a minor-league baseball player each season, meets two men, LaLoosh (Tim Robbins) and Crash (Kevin Costner), the experienced catched assigned to LaLoosh. A comical story about baseball and sex. After all, "what else is there?"

Great roles for Sarandon, Robbins and Costner. Can't imagine anyone else playing these roles. Robbins is excellent as the dim "Nuke" LaLoosh.

Even if you don't know anything about baseball (like me), this drama is still decent, enjoyable... and pretty much a classic.