Trouble with the Curve

I watched this other day, because I thought it might be pretty good having Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams in it.  It was worth watching once as a filler movie, but was definitely not at the top of Eastwood's work.


Trouble with the Curve is a 2012 sports drama film.  The film revolves around an aging baseball scout (Eastwood) whose deteriorating health leads his daughter (Amy Adams) to accompany him on one last scouting trip.  This is the first movie that Eastwood has acted in since 2008's Gran Torino, and his first acting role that he didn't also direct since his cameo in 1995's Casper.







The cast includes:
Clint Eastwood as Gus (Bridges of Madison County, Unforgiven, Good the Bad and the Ugly)
Chelcie Ross as Smitty (Mad Men, Drag Me to Hell, Basic Instinct, Major League, Hoosiers)
Amy Adams as Mickey (Enchanted, American Hustle, Her, Man of Steel, The Fighter, Leap Year)
Matthew Lillard as Phillip (Scoppy Doo, The Bridge, Without a Paddle, Thir13en Ghosts)
John Goodman as Pete (Monster's, Inc, Argo, Alpha House, Roseanne, Community, Evan Almighty)
Justin Timberlake as Johnny (SNL, In Time, Friends with Benefits, Bad Teacher, Alpha Dog)

A year after Trouble with the Curve was released it became the subject of a plagiarism lawsuit by a producer alleging that his former partner had taken an unfinished script after a dispute.  The results of the lawsusit were that the original was draftds as early as 1996.  A judge found that the similarities were over-stated and that the film was not a plagiarism.   Overall criticism to the film marked it at around 50%.

I give this movie 3 out of 5 stars.  It was not a spectacular film, but it wasn't horrible.  Kind of a boring movie, a lot of potential, but kind of a snoozer in terms of action.  Interesting look into sports scouting. 

You can visit the official website at: Trouble with the Curve

Leap Year Review

I waited a long time to watch this movie because I thought it could possibly be a waste of time.  So finally last night I was able to find the time to watch it.  As I suspected it was not the greatest movie of all time.  It could have been a lot better except that it really was pretty slow moving. 

The story moved quite slow.  It is about Amy Adams who has been with her boyfriend (played by Adam Scott ) for 4 years and she keeps thinking that he is about to propose to her but he doesn't.  They are getting ready to move into an amazing apartment together and she wants to be engaged.  Her father tells her of an Irish tradition where a woman is allowed to proposed to the man on February 29th.  Of course Amy's boyfriend happens to be in Ireland at the time.  So she goes on quite a long, slow, very bad luck journey trying to reach him in time to propose.  During this time she gets escorted by an Irish man who fights with her as well as cats and dogs. 

Overall her journey is VERY slow moving, and it is quite predictable.  There was supposed to be humor in it, but Amy Adams didn't deliver the scenes or lines well enough for it to go past dry humor.  Her costar (Mathew Goode) was fine, but he was also quite boring and played his role better but the chemistry that was supposed to be crackling in the air did not transfer through the screen for me.

Even the beauty of Ireland seemed to have been lost in this film.  The scenes really weren't set up very well in my opinion.  This could have been a lot better story, but overall the delivery just wasn't there and Amy Adams is sort of a boring actress to watch anyway.  Although I give it an extra star (making it a full 3 stars out of 5) just because it makes me want to go to Ireland and find a man to marry.  And makes me reminisce about P.S. I Love You.  Overall this movie failed because I didn't feel drawn in as part of the story.  Watch if you have nothing better to do on a bored night.