Sandlot 3: Heading Home DVD: Review By Brian Gallagher

I wonder if all the kids from the original Sandlot movie would've guessed, way back in 1993, that two sequels would derive from their original movie that turned into a moderate hit and a psuedo-cult classic. This one isn't totally a sequel, more of a new gang on the same sandlot (think Saved By the Bell: The New Class...), but we do have a few of the original characters and the same sort of spirit that made the original a hit. Of course, though, it pales in comparison to the original.

This one starts out with Tommy "Santa" Santorelli (Luke Perry... yeah, I know), one of pro baseballs biggest stars... and the c*ckiest and most egotistical. After playing for several teams throughout his career, whoever pays him the most, he ends up back in his hometown of Los Angeles, playing for the Dodgers, what will be the last stop in his pro career. While there's no questioning his talent, his self-centered ways haven't earned him much popularity throughout his days. Then one day, during his own personal batting practice, through a crazy fluke, he gets beaned in the head and goes down. When he wakes up, he's himself... but he's 12. He's still the same Santa he thinks he is, but he's a kid, riding his bike past the sandlot when he gets hit in the noggin with a baseball. Basically, it's a reverse version of Big. So, he's 12 again, with the c*ckiness and mentality of his 40-year-old self, and he's trying to cope with this whole deal, going back to his roots with his family and baseball down at the sandlot, and even running into Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez (Danny Nucci), former sandlot legend, present Dodger player and future Dodger manager of the future Santa. Yeah, kinda weird, eh?

For a 90-ish minute movie, they certainly cram the flick full of nuances and subplots, some old and most new. The only other character from the original, besides Benny, is Michael 'Squints' Palledorous, played by the original actor, Chauncey Leopardi. He's an optomotrist now, but he also looks over the sandlot and is the youth baseball commissioner. Along with that we have Santa happy to be back with his mother, who died young from cancer, the kids wooing Santa to be on their team to win the championship, a rich businessman who wants to raze the sandlot to make way for condos, his son who's the snobby kid on the "real" baseball team who badly wants to beat the sandlot team, Santa trying to figure out why he's back in his kid self, confiding in Ryan the mute kid, and other stuff as well. Along with Big, there seem to be influences from Back to The Future, The Benchwarmers and Mr. Destiny. Along with that, with the references to other things from the first sandlot movie, it really doesn't seem like that original of a movie at all, more like a collage or a mural of certain parts from certain movies; a movie mixed tape, if you will.

While we get solid performances by most of the cast, especially from Danny Nucci as Benny and Keanu Pires as the young Tommy, the script by Keith Mitchell and Allie Dvorin is filled with overwriting. Just like someone can overact, someone can overwrite as well, and Mitchell and Dvorin fit this mold. They try WAY too hard to make jokes out of these past/present differences with slang and other things, like when Santa first goes back to when he was 12, he asks where his Blackberry is, and one of the kids hands him a blackberry sno cone. Yeah. Lame. I won't even get into the logistics of getting hit in the head with a baseball and going back in time to when you were 12, because it's not really worth it. The one thing that Mitchell and Dvorin do succeed in is the essential spirit of the movie that comes close to equalling the first movie. It's a happy-go-lucky type of movie, but there's plenty of drama and/or thinly-veiled lessons peppered throughout this movie.

The Sandlot: Heading Home certainly doesn't hold a candle to the first one, but it isn't exceedingly terrible. While it would've been nice to see them try something more original here, it's an average/decent update of this classic.

They offer a decent array of features here. For the Love of the Game: Sharing Memories with "Goose" Gossage is up first. I'm really not sure why they picked Goose Gossage for this. Sure, he's a Hall-of-Famer and everything, but it seems such a random choice for this. It's just an interview, conducted by some guy who doesn't seem to have any significance, with him asking, and Goose telling about growing up playing baseball all the way up to the major leagues and how baseball can help you along the way in real life and such. There's some good stuff in this 9-minute interview, if you're a parent and have an impressionable kid, especially.

A Deleted Scene: Tommy Talks to Mom is up next, and it's only 45 seconds and isn't really important at all.

We get some Bloopers next, and it's a cute 2-minute reel of some goofs. It won't send you into a fits of laughter, but they're cute, and stuff.

There's also a Storyboard Gallery but I've never really seen the point of those and it says to flip the disc over to Side B for more features. I can't do that, since this is a studio promo disc with an ugly white label on the disc with a bunch of telephone numbers to call if someone rented or bought this disc. Anyway, it says that on the B-side there are Keanu & Ludwig's Double Play, Director's Video Diary and demo's for a couple of baseball video games. Oh well.

The disc is presented in the widescreen format, enhanced for 16x9 televisions.

The sound is handled through the Dobly Digital 5.1 format.

I really don't know, since all I got was the disc with the stupid white label, but apparently the front cover has all the kids standing by the sandlot fence. Not sure about the back.

If you loved the first one, you probably won't love this one, although your kids might.