Mr. Baseball
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Movie Reviews of Mr. Baseball
Movie Review: Must have if going to Japan
Summary: 5 Stars
The movie tells it like it is. I have lived here for 3 years and still get a laugh out of it. Hard to find here in Japan so get it before you get here.Movie Review: one of the better sports flicks!
Summary: 5 Stars
Ranks right up there...almost...with bull durham; sadly without Susan Sarandon! Ken Takakura steals this pic hands down!Movie Review: sooo funny
Summary: 5 Stars
this show is an all time classic. you can watch over and over again. love it!Movie Review: Worlds collide, no one leaves unchanged
Summary: 4 Stars
Tom Selleck plays Jack Elliot in this funny and insightful comedy about an American baseball player 'demoted' to the Japanese league. It has all the cultural in-jokes that you'd expect including "Taking a bath before washing", "Wearing shoes indoors", and "You say one thing, the translator will make it sound nice".But at the heart of the movie, the story is all about accepting foreign culture. Jack butts heads with Japanese culture. He is loose, relaxed, and immature. The Japanese are tight, uptight, and very serious. As long as everyone sees him as an outsider, they will respect him in public but doubt him in private, and he will never truly fit in.
After a series of humiliating losses, he finally reaches the point where he realizes that his strength and skill are not enough to defeat his problems and he turns to the coach and Japanese culture to help him overcome his ego. The coach admonishes him to stop feeding off of his past successes lest he eat all those successes away, look only to the future in other words. He does so and the rest of the movie shows Elliot becoming stronger in the stadium and spiritual world. By embracing the Japanese Way, he becomes a better person.
However, the flip side to this movie is that the Japanese Way has led to a failing baseball team. Despite the coach's best efforts to harangue the players into playing well, they are too gunshy to play their best. It isn't until the coach accepts that the softer method of coaching based on encouraging the players and fostering a team spirit that the team's slump ends. Jack Elliot made his own mark on the team by bringing trademark American-style attitude to the team.
In the end the message is clear. At the micro-level, the Japanese style of living with its emphasis on detail, cooperation, and austerity is beneficial, and the American style emphasizing laziness, freedom, and individuality is detrimental. At the macro-level, though, the message is quite the opposite. Success is brought by each individual's freedom to make mistakes, being relaxed, and not having an oppressive culture looming above.
It's a fun movie with a lot of insight into the Japanese culture as well as insight into American culture. Well worth renting at least once.
Movie Review: You gotta have Wa
Summary: 4 Stars
The biggest surprise of "Mr. Baseball" is not that it's actually a pretty good movie, which it is, but that it's one of the few entries in the "Wacky Japan" genre that delivers an honest portrayal of Japan and the Japanese people, as well as as the awkwardness of being a foreigner in Japan, instead of stereotype-ridden nonsense like "Gung Ho!" and "Lost in Translation."
The plot is pretty basic. An aging baseball player gets traded to a Japanese team. Proceed fish out of water story, complete with convenient love story and eventual cultural reconciliation, which shows that both countries have something to give. Its a common enough theme, but still worthwhile if pulled off well. The story has a foundation of truth, being based in part on American ball player Randy Bass and his attempt to break Japanese legend Sadaharu Oh's home run record while playing for the Osaka-based Hanshin Tigers.
Much of the film is carried by Tom Selleck, who has shown in films like "Quigley Down Under" and "In & Out" that he can handle the big screen. He has an easy charm about him, which helps him establish a likable character even when he is being a big loudmouth American jerk. His foil is Coach Uchiyama, played by Ken Takakura who is arguably the greatest Japanese actor of his generation. It was a shock to hear Takakura speak English. I didn't know he could! The two represent the obstinate styles of their representative countries, neither willing to give in or admit the strengths of the other. In-between these two are the American baseball player Max "Hammer" Dubois, who has been in Japan for awhile and has assimilated more or less, and the beautiful Hiroko, who is finally strong enough to break through Selleck's pigheadedness.
So no surprises with the story, but anyone looking for a real window in what it is to come to Japan as a foreigner could do worse that checking out "Mr. Baseball." Its one of the few movies I wish I had actually seen before I came to Japan, although seeing it afterwards I was able to reminisce fondly over the same mistakes I made, and the same stupid assumptions I brought over.