Major League: Review By moviegeek

Finally. FINALLY! It's been a long, long while since I've seen a comedy that made me feel genuinely good, elated, and satisfied. Here is a comedy that has found a comic rhythm and sticks to it the entire movie. Major League is a riotous collaboration of sports references, character foils, and slapstick quirks. The result makes for one great movie.

After a shift in management, the Cleveland Indians (a baseball team for those who are less sports-minded) are placed under control of a power-hungry woman. The losing team she is in control of is placing her on shaky ground. She uncovers a clause in the contract stating that if the attendance for the year is below a certain point, the team can move to Miami and start fresh. She is eager to take the opportunity and plans to do everything in her power to make her team the worst in the league.

Things look good when a bunch of rag-tag players form the roster. But, even with their quirks, they work hard and start to grow better and better, much to the manager's dislike. Each of the team members has a unique quirk that make them below average. There is the speed-pitcher who can't throw straight, the power-hitter who can't hit anything but a fastball, and the shortstop who won't step in front of a grounder for fear of self-injury.

But the comedy doesn't lie in the setups. It lies in the executions. In scenes that would seem terribly dry and unfunny on paper, the cast has an irrefutable way of making the comedy come alive. None of the characters are really rounded at all. In fact, most of them are simply plot devices. But in a movie like this, it works.

Not only does Major League work as a comedy, it also works as a inspirational comeback story. Some of the baseball scenes are so precisely photographed, the music so perfectly timed, the pacing so wonderfully tense, that when we see shots of the crowds cheering, we want to join right in.

I mentioned consistency earlier, but this is such a crucially well-executed element that I want to come back to it. Many comedies try so hard to appeal to everyone that they aspire to be funnier than they really ought to be. Some movies have an uneasy blend of witty dialogue and slapstick humor; or crude vulgarity with some PG-jokes.

Major League is so great because it has a rhythm, a comic pace. The laughs are consistent. They all work in the genre and with the tone of the film. Yes, some jokes fall flat. Yes, some of the humor is arguably dumb. But, if so, this dumb movie was created by some smart people who genuinely cared about making their audience leave the movie with a smile on their faces. Such was my closing reaction.