The Final Season: Critic Reviews

Star and executive producer Sean Astin must have hoped for another Rudy with this based-on-a-true-story sports picture, but The Final Season is actually an impassioned plea against school consolidation.

The US corn surplus is in no way eased by The Final Season, an Iowa high school baseball saga that goes heavy on the inspiration, sports-movie cliches, and high-fructose syrup.

The film's climactic baseball game does crackle with nail-biting energy, but the 90-minute lead-up is full of hokey sentiment and unearned gushiness.

Remarkably, the movie rights itself once the actual season begins, focusing on game strategy more than the usual heart-stopping pep talks.

The Final Season is as corny as an Iowa farm field, but as the World Series rolls around, fans of the sport might want to check out this tried-and-true tale of overcoming adversity, beating the odds and banding together for a righteous cause.

For once, here's a sports movie that doesn't feature players who are expected to lose.

There's not quite as much corn in The Final Season as there is in the Iowa farm fields that run through it, but it's close.

As corny as Iowa and as predictable as an intentional walk.

Sports movies have become so generic and so common that it takes something unusual or affecting to spark an audience. The Final Season has neither.

Poor writing, an indifferent production and sincere but often wooden acting make Season one big strikeout.

...manages to overcome the entirely underwhelming nature of its first act.

Heartwarming-but-trite drama for baseball fans.

Most of the townspeople are archetypes. In fact, you get the feeling the town is populated by character actors and not real people.

An exciting family picture, worthy of viewing, if only for the warm-fuzzy feeling.

...strictly pro forma.

It never hits a home run. But "Final Season," an adequate movie about an above-average baseball team, isn't a loser, either.

Other than what happens on the playing field in 'The Final Season,' there's not much else going on.

Inspirational but overly cliched with its pseudo-earnestness...In short, this heartland-based hokum about a high school baseball team is definitely corn off the cob.

The tagline should be changed from How Do You Want To Be Remembered, to How Do You Want To Be Forgotten? You will find yourself forgetting too!

So relentlessly earnest and maudlin it makes Hoosiers look like a Martin Scorsese film, The Final Season is the latest and worst sports-themed underdog story to get the big screen treatment.

Belying the claim there's no longer any truth in advertising, The Final Season is exactly the formulaic, by-the-numbers movie it appears to be. These Tigers deserved better.