LGM Film Club, Part 257: The Natural

I happened to watch The Natural last night and I am reminded that this is a terrible, no good, awful movie. Almost everything about it is bad. First, it serves just as Robert Redford worship vehicle. Second, the gender politics of this movie are utterly atrocious. Glenn Close plays the Madonna, with full backlighting. Kim Basinger and Barbara Hershey play the whores, as evil as they come. Third, the baseball scenes are ludicrous. When Redford isn’t seeing Basinger, he hits about .900/950/1.950 with every home run going approximately 580 feet. When he is seeing Basinger, he hits .050/100/150 with 8000 strikeouts. And also the team defense is evidently entirely dependent on which version of Redford you get. When he isn’t fucking Basinger, they play like gold glovers and when he is balls deep, they play like 8th graders, with balls going through the legs and throws going into the stands. Fourth, all of the other characters are wildly underdeveloped, which sucks because there are so many outstanding actors in it. Duvall is a caricature of the evil sportswriter, all the women have terrible roles, Wilford Brimley is great, but has little explained, etc. Richard Farnsworth, Michael Madsen, all sorts of people show up for mediocre parts. Fifth, the movie never found a cliche it didn’t like. Sixth, THE FILM CHANGES THE END BECAUSE ROY HOBBS TAKES THE MONEY IN THE MALAMUD BOOK!!!

This is just cheesy trash. It’s very bad and no one should ever watch it. Unless you want to remind yourself what complete crap it is. Anyway, here’s a clip.