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75If you want a whiff of how unironic the 1970s were, consider bowling, a sport that on any given weekend was broadcast (usually on ABC) with the hushed solemnity of a moon launch.
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75While the movie is strong on the history of its subject, it allows some yawns to enter its own account of a big, heavily hyped tournament. Still, it's very entertaining.
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75If ever a movie could convince the masses to don communal shoes, this is the one.
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70Christopher Browne's fun, surprisingly exciting film probably won't convert anyone convinced that bowling is something you do while downing fish sticks and beer. But it may teach them a newfound respect for the sport's champions.
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50The first 15-20 minutes of this documentary are solid gold.
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70Following four players through the first season of Miller's regime, Browne captures not just a high-energy sports spectacle played out in the bowling megaplexes of outer suburbia but, even more interestingly, a clash of cultures between bowling's hallowed past and its possible future.
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75As easy to enjoy as picking up a spare, and we don't mean a tire around the waist.
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70Narrows as it goes, and Browne doesn't do enough with the idea of a corporate takeover of a grassroots recreational activity, but Weber's antics and his colleagues' reactions make for fine drama all on their own.
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80hilarious, sometimes rueful, and strangely hip documentary.
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70Browne keeps it amusingly involving.
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50The movie is affectionate without exactly being infectious, and Browne, who begins his film with the Michael Moore–esque revelation that Americans bowl in greater numbers than they vote, disappoints by not devoting more attention to bowling in its amateur incarnations.
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80Chris Browne's sense of humor captures perfectly the contradictions, absurdities and drama at the intersection of class, media, money and sports without dissing any of his player/subjects.
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80Informativeand endearing film.
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50Directing his first feature, Christopher Browne shows flair and determination in getting the movie's pathos down pat, but he can't quite find enough that is pleasurable in its many reels.
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80Geared to please audiences of all tastes.
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60Christopher Browne's entertaining A League of Ordinary Gentlemen goes behind the scenes of the Professional Bowlers Association's comeback bid following the league's 2000 sale (for a mere $5 million) to a trio of retired Microsoft execs.
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If there is a poetry to losing, then this film has as much as the collected works of John Milton.