|
New This Week
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search
Upcoming Release Calendar
Awards & Bests By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Bull Durham
MGM
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R
Starring
Kevin Costner,
Susan Sarandon,
Tim Robbins,
Trey Wilson,
and
Robert Wuhl
A romantic love story set in the dirt and grit of minor league baseball. Sarandan is a groupie for the Carolina Durham Bulls who chooses a protege each season to school in the art of love. This season she picks the team's untameable pitcher but eventually abides her true passion, the team's catcher, Costner. (MGM)
| GENRE(S): |
Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Ron Shelton
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Ron Shelton
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: October 28, 1998
Video: September 4, 2001
Theatrical: June 15, 1988
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
108 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
Ron Shelton was nominated for a Best Writing, Original Screenplay Oscar in 1989.
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
USA Today
Mike Clark
Though his film is like no other baseball movie, it may remind you of Paul Newman's hockey comedy Slap Shot: a knowing look at sport's underbelly - punctuated by jelly-belly laughs. [15 June 1988]
100
Time
Richard Corliss
Shelton has written the wittiest, busiest screenplay since Moonstruck, and his three stars do their very best screen work. [20 June 1988]
90
Los Angeles Times
Sheila Benson
It's just that when a movie is this close, with so much of the sports flavor (co-producer Thom Mount is co-owner of the real Durham Bulls), you like to see it perfect. [15 June 1988]
90
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
The movie evokes Howard Hawks (in spirit if not to the letter) with its tight focus on a snug, obsessive world of insiders and camp followers where the exchanges between buddies and sexes have a euphoric stylishness and a giddy sense of ritual.
90
Washington Post
Hal Hinson
It eases up on you, lazy as a cloud, and carries you off in a mood of exquisite delight. To borrow W.P. Kinsella's phrase, it has the thrill of the grass.
88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
A treasure of a movie because it knows so much about baseball and so little about love.
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Jay Scott
A loopy, loving nine innings full of comic curve balls, emotional home-runs and euphoric, summertime music.
80
Film Threat
Brad Laidman
The best movie ever made about baseball, and it's not even really that close... "Major League" was funny, but Bull Durham is funny, literate, romantic, and overwhelmingly adherent to the idiosyncracies of the game.
80
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
You may catch yourself trying to remember where you parked a little before the end.
75
Chicago Tribune
Dave Kehr
Successfully avoids the grandiose mythmaking that has been the bane of the baseball movie from ''Pride of the Yankees'' to ''The Natural.'' Rather than a vapid national epic, it is a warm, droll, deftly cracked romantic comedy. [15 June 1988]
75
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Even if baseball isn't your favorite sport, or if you don't like sports much at all, you'll find something to catch your attention in this smartly made (if unblushingly vulgar) new comedy. [7 July 1988]
70
Variety
Staff (Not Credited)
A fanciful and funny bush league sports story where the only foul ball is its overuse of locker-room dialog.
70
TV Guide
Staff (Non Credited)
Featuring outstanding lead performances by Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins; a witty, literate script; and an insider's familiarity with life around minor league baseball--Bull Durham is both one of the best films ever made about the national pastime and a charming romantic comedy.
40
The New York Times
Elvis Mitchell
Dialogue that strains to be colorful, indiscriminately piled-on pop songs, plot developments that aren't followed through on, and minor aspects of motivation that are never known. [15 June 1988, p.C20]
40
The New Republic
Stanley Kauffmann
What is outstandingly incredible are the high-flown pronouncements, including literary judgments, given suddenly to Costner. They make him sound like a dummy for Shelton the ventriloquist. [1 Aug 1988]
25
San Francisco Chronicle
Gerald Nachman
In a word, bull - cruddy, foul-smelling and fly-specked, an excuse for a series of cheap sex scenes and single-entendre gags. [15 June 1988]
 The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 8 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Discuss this movie in our forums |
|
