Who Said Women Can't Play Ball? (A League Of Their Own review)

A League Of Their Own

* * * *

It is rare to see such a good sports movie. I myself hate the genre, for it is way too overdone, and they are all the same. This one is different though. A League Of Their Own is a film about the first All American Womens Baseball Team. The team is filled with women that didn’t have men around due to World War II. The women struggle at first to get the team running, but eventually being women they used their assets in a creative way to attract the crowds mainly composed of men not in the war.

My problem with these type of films is that they are all meant to be inspirational, but they all do it in the same way. The sales pitch is usually a team facing many challenges whether between its team members or just being the underdogs against other teams. Sometimes it’s just a single protagonist who against all odds and expectations manages to do the impossible and succeeds in a team. A League Of Their Own is similar in that the women face the challenge of gaining the respect of the men. They are treated like, “women can’t play ball”, and that is the similarity with all the other sports movies. The one thing that saved this movie from me throwing it in the trash with all the other sports movies was the fact that the characters were women. I hadn’t or at least didn’t remember seeing such a scenario.

A League Of Their Own is more than just a sports movie. It goes beyond the sport and creates this wonderful feeling of friendship at the best time of the character‘s lives. The movie is filled harmless humor, and moments that would make one laugh many times over and over again. The film was released the year I was born, 1992, and all I can think of is “why can’t comedies and sports movies be like this?” Show us something we haven’t seen, and make us laugh without offensive language and other stupid acts used to define humor now a days. Is it too much to ask? No I don’t think so, still even as funny as A League Of Their Own may be it goes further than being a comedy.

This film has funny moments, it has delightful moments, unkind moments, and then it has it’s sad moments. Funny was that kid that annoyed everyone on the team. A horrible little monster I would call him, yet lots of fun. As for delightful, one word only, Madonna. She was great and perhaps one of my favorite scenes was at the bar where she just dances the night away. I loved Madonna in this, and sorry but I do have to say that I had never seen her in a movie before. She plays the free spirited Mae Mordabito. For the unkind, I could only go back to the rude and disgusting manager Jimmy Dugan played by Tom Hanks. He was very mean to the women of the team at the beginning, and of course he changed his feelings about them, but still made a bad first impression. The film finally also had it’s sad moments like when one of the players gets the terrible news that her husband has died in war. It was a moment that clearly elevated the film from just any sports movie. It made it real.

Perhaps the greatest thing about this movie that deviates from all other sports movies and conventional Hollywood movies is the ending. When after a wonderful streak our heroines, The Peaches, make it to the first ever women’s world series we only expected one thing, for them to win. In any other movie they would have, but here they didn’t. I loved the touch that a movie was finally made about the loosing team. I’m sure there are other out there, but this one is special. The ending was inspiring, yet unconventional. No one want’s to see the protagonists fail. Everyone wants to see a completely 100% happy ending. Well, I don’t, for life is not just complete happiness. I loved how real the ending was, and how the characters handled it.

I loved this movie all around, and even if it is not a cinematic breakthrough or the best movie ever, I would recommend it to anyone. It’s one of those feel good movies without being the typical feel good movie. I like to think of A League Of Their Own as a movie that is timeless, one that no matter how many years pass by, it will never get old, it will never loose its charm.