| 63 |
TV Guide
Yes it's as corny as Kansas in August, but this admittedly formulaic sports drama is base on a true story and has something important to say about the fate of many small Midwestern American towns whose popular sports teams fall victim to school consolidation.
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| 63 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
There's a sign on the way into Norway, or at least a sign that somebody from the film crew put up: "On the eighth day, God created baseball." If amen is your answer to that, then The Final Season is the movie for you.
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| 60 |
LA Weekly
Tim Grierson
Formulaic but not cynical, The Final Season has some sweet, thoughtful passages in what is otherwise just one more well-meaning inspirational sports movie.
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| 58 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
There are too many unearned runs to fully embrace this underdog triumph.
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| 50 |
Washington Post
Mike Mayo
Nathan Wang's score borrows blatantly from "The Natural" and is slathered on thick in all the big emotional scenes. They establish the right nostalgic mood, but it's broken with that loud "ping" of a metal bat every time a kid gets a hit.
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| 50 |
Variety
John Anderson
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.
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| 50 |
ReelViews
Evans' goal is to do for high school baseball what "Hoosiers" did for high school basketball, but to mention both titles in one sentence is almost an insult to a picture that many rank as the first or second all-time sports film.
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| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Follows a predictable format.
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| 50 |
Chicago Reader
This takes place in the same sort of pathologically sports-obsessed hamlet as "Friday Night Lights," though in contrast to that movie's grim honesty there's enough heartland schmaltz here to embarrass John Mellencamp. Remarkably, the movie rights itself once the actual season begins, focusing on game strategy more than the usual heart-stopping pep talks.
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| 50 |
Boston Globe
The movie is decent and heartfelt, and it eventually settles into some sharp diamond action, but the small-town homilies are dropped like an anvil. If you thought 1993's "Rudy" was too spare and unsentimental, Final Season is for you.
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| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Staff (Not credited)
In a movie where the timing of a squeeze bunt is presented as the thing of beauty that it is, and the eradication of small-town culture in a changing world is a genuine concern, the simplifying countrified morality of The Final Season is the real crying shame.
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| 50 |
Miami Herald
Exactly the formulaic, by-the-numbers movie it appears to be. These Tigers deserved better.
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| 42 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
All these stereotypes are meant to exalt small-town values, but The Final Season is proof that it's hard to paint masterpiece in broad strokes.
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| 40 |
The Hollywood Reporter
Poor writing, an indifferent production and sincere but often wooden acting make "Season" one big strikeout.
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| 25 |
Chicago Tribune
Tasha Robinson
Viewers who don’t flee the intrusively uplifting soundtrack and choking sentiment get just what that opening promised: a by-the-numbers, based-in-reality inspirational sports movie, thick with overwhelming pride and nostalgia for small-town farmland America.
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| 11 |
Austin Chronicle
Toddy Burton
Kind of "Hoosiers": Part 2. But the storytelling is so backassward that it’s impossible to care about any of the characters or really engage in the movie whatsoever.
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