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75Trouble With the Curve isn't a great sports film, like Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" (2004). But it's a superior entertainment, moving down somewhat predictable paths with an authenticity and humanity that appeals.
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50This is a character we have seen a million times before and Eastwood brings little that's new or original to the part. The movie as a whole can be labeled with the same criticism.
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63Eastwood and Adams are just so much damn fun to watch.
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42Even those who don't know a foul tip from a chicken wing will be able to spot the desperate plays.
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63The script is by first-timer Randy Brown, but it feels as if it were spit out by one of the assistant GM's computers, so regular are its beats and revelations.
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70This amiable, old-fashioned film is no world-beater, but it underlines why, appearances with empty chairs excepted, it is always a pleasure to see this man on the screen.
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50Trouble With the Curve finally finds its zone when Gus and Mickey find the young baseball prodigy they've been looking for. That doesn't happen until the narrative's last inning, though, too late to save the movie. I'd call it "Neanderthalball."
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50Its title notwithstanding, there's nothing that remotely approaches a narrative curve ball in this tired saga of an aging baseball scout.
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50Adams is absolutely winning in this role, which requires her to be a tough-as-nails attorney, grownup tomboy, and psychologically scarred adult. And she makes a good foil for Eastwood, though it's often uncomfortable to see the actor going through melodramatic paces.
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67What you get in Trouble with the Curve is standard-issue late-career Eastwoodiana. The growl, the snarl, the crotchetiness are already familiar to us from "Million Dollar Baby" (2004) and "Gran Torino" (2009), his last appearance as an actor.
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70Regrettably, it is not a home run or a perfect game, but it isn't a wild throw, an errant bunt or a dropped fly ball either. Trouble With the Curve is either an off-speed pitch that just catches the edge of the strike zone or a bloop single lofted into right field. The runner is safe. The movie is too.
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38Clint has a script. Actually, Clint has too much script, one of those schematic by-the-number jobs that telegraphs its every pitch.
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80Eastwood is vastly entertaining as an old-fashioned scout who disdains computers and fancy statistical charts in favor of his own time-tested instincts.
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75Wholly predictable yet serenely enjoyable.
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63The good news is that this daddy/daughter reconciliation story connects with the ball. The not-so-good: It's a blooper.
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63Baseball movies tend to be lyrical, deeply felt, aggressively metaphorical and (consequently) terrible, but Trouble With the Curve has something most others lack: Eastwood's superb, cruel sense of humor, which reaches all the way back to "Every Which Way But Loose."
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50Trouble With the Curve presents viewers with a frustrating change-up: What promised to be a modest, refreshingly unforced little comedy turns out to be low energy to a fault.
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75In Trouble With The Curve, Eastwood plays a reminder of an older way of doing things, a professional whose likes the world won't see again once he's gone. The role isn't much of a stretch.
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60Trouble With the Curve is easily digestible in chunks – if it were a CBS show, it'd be called "Postseason With Morrie" - and it has an affectionate view of grubby motels, greasy diners and small-town scoreboards.
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70If the modest and moving Trouble With the Curve won't overwhelm anybody, it's still an engaging winner, like a junk-ball pitcher who stays in the bigs on grit and heart.
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60As cheap as the whole set-up is, the actors make wonderful music together - even if there's not much left of Eastwood's vocal cords except a handful of dust.
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50Unfortunately even a clogging Timberlake can't stop the movie's march to a conveniently happy ending. Nor can he block the flow of psychobabble. It's enough to make any fan beg: Play ball. Please.
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50Everything about Trouble With the Curve is as streamlined and hollow as a Wiffle Ball bat.
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70The intricate baseball knowledge that gets passed back and forth among the characters in Trouble with the Curve is much more interesting than the moral simplicities that the movie offers. [8 Oct. 2012, p.87]
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60Ends up being the kind of movie we don't see a whole lot anymore: an emotionally grounded and quietly meaningful crowd-pleaser that functions as a lovely antidote to the recently ended summer blockbuster season.
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60Adams gets a delectable onscreen partner in Justin Timberlake as a novice scout who takes an interest in Mickey. Even the old half-naked-moonlight-swim gambit feels fresh with these two involved.
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60There is something to be said for giving people what they want, but there are no surprises in Randy Brown's script, and Lorenz plays it safe. It's feel-good stuff; you wonder what Eastwood, a terrific director, might have done with it behind the camera.
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42One of the most lifeless and predictable movies you're likely to see this year.
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80A defiantly analog rejoinder to last year's tech-savvy baseball drama, "Moneyball," Robert Lorenz's square but sturdy directing debut rests on the wonderfully spiky chemistry between Eastwood and Amy Adams.
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58Director Robert Lorenz makes a nondescript debut, after assisting Eastwood on several of his directing gigs. The student hasn't learned much from the teacher about economic storytelling or deflecting schmaltz.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 21
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Mixed: 8 out of 21
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Negative: 4 out of 21
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10The best movie I've seen of Clint Eastwood.