A League of Their Own (1992)
Directed by Penny Marshall
As America's stock of athletic young men is depleted during World War II, a professional all-female baseball league springs up in the Midwest, funded by publicity-hungry candy maker Walter Harvey. Competitive sisters Dottie Hinson and Kit Keller spar with each other, scout Ernie Capadino and grumpy has-been coach Jimmy Dugan on their way to fame.
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What critics compared A League of Their Own to
Marshall, one of the great creative minds of Hollywood and the man behind Happy Days and Mork & Mindy back in the day, offers a modern wink at his sister Penny’s A League of Their Own — “There’s no texting in soccer” — and even pays homage to his own work, with Hector Elizondo playing a confidante to Roberts’ character, much like that in Pretty Woman.
Sometimes, Marshall and his writers’ room give up on the hard work of forging their own hacky gags and settle for references to other films from the Marshall dynasty, like a Pretty Woman “salad fork” non sequitur between Roberts and Marshall’s smug mascot Hector Elizondo, or a scene where Sudeikis must wanly refer to A League Of Their Own (directed by Marshall’s sister Penny) by announcing that “There’s no texting in soccer.”
Reminiscent of something like A League of Their Own (1992), but without the glossy pizzazz, Military Wives actually plays like the gender reversal of the same formula used on the out-of-work steelworkers who decide to bare it all in The Full Monty .
Speaking of nostalgia, that initial meeting takes place at a Halloween party where Avery’s dressed as Dottie from “A League of Their Own” and Noah is Garth from a movie I shouldn’t have to name so I won’t.
She was Geena Davis in “A League of Their Own.”
This is virtually the same character Walter Matthau played in "The Bad News Bears," though Hanks manages to make the role his own.
As in A League of Their Own, it's the relationship between coach and team that pulls you in, while the child actors are more than a match for old pro Matthau - especially O'Neal, who has more screen presence than dad Ryan ever had.
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There's also a hint of Tom Hanks' Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own, as a star athlete-turned-fall-down-drunk who earns redemption through coaching.
The 3-D musical "Frozen" may not rank as a great Walt Disney animated classic, but it still packs breathtaking scenes, welcome moments of visual and verbal hilarity, plus the most endearing cinematic tribute to sisterhood since "A League of Their Own."
Listen to it and you can almost hear Tom Hanks spouting out “There’s no crying in baseball,” from “A League of Their Own.”
Case in point is the scene where Shaun is entertaining a Stanford official who's played by actor/director Garry Marshall ("Never Been Kissed," "A League of Their Own") in one of those extended cameo bits.
That may be partly because the Farrellys didn't write "Fever Pitch": The script, inspired by Nick Hornby's 1992 memoir, is by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, who specialize in sleek products like "Splash," "A League of Their Own" and "City Slickers."
The "man reluctant to grow up" concept has been dealt with before and infinitely better in movie adaptations of Hornby's other novels "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy." Ben sleeps on Red Sox sheets, washes with Red Sox towels, and wipes with Red Sox toilet paper, but screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel ("A League of Their Own," "City Slickers") ignore all of the character's internal thoughts and concentrate too hard on hitting all the typical signposts of a romantic comedy, leaving out the very thing that makes a good one stand out: personality.
Hit-and-miss screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel ("Father's Day," "A League of Their Own") do many things right in this lose adaptation of an autobiographical book about soccer fandom by Englishman Nick Hornsby ("High Fidelity").
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It’s hard not to think of “A League of Their Own” (a far superior film), and these seminal moments in female sports that are somehow both revolutionary and meaningless.
He's a long way from the tough but tender Coach Taylor that Chandler played on "Friday Night Lights" — Hal is more of a grumpy mentor in the vein of Tom Hanks' character in "A League of Their Own" — but it's a nice change of pace for Chandler as an actor.