Million Dollar Arm “Thousand Dollar Movie”
May 22nd
(“Thousand Dollar Movie”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
MILLION DOLLAR ARM is a comedy about sports, and it is about an underdog who eventually achieves success.
It is also a Disney movie, and so you might think it could practically write itself, but it didn’t, because it is based on a true story.
Jon Hamm plays JB Bernstein, a sports agent who along with his partner, Aash, have been on their own for three years, and they can’t manage to sign a new client.
In fact, all their good clients are retired.
At the beginning of the movie, JB is trying to sign a professional football player named Popo, but Popo says that he wants a $1 million bonus in cash up front.
JB tells Popo, “What? I can’t do that. No one can do that.”
The agency’s situation is so bad that Aash says he doesn’t think he can keep doing it.
So, one night JB is bored and flipping through the television channels when he comes across a cricket match and “Britain’s got Talent,” in which Susan Boyle amazed Great Britain with her singing.
JB gets the idea of combining the two concepts and that leads him to going to India and conducting a talent competition in the hopes of finding a cricket player who can be trained to pitch a baseball and eventually become a professional baseball player in the United States.
And the first half of the movie is about JB in India trying to find two pitchers to bring back to the U.S. to be trained and be good enough to get a tryout with a professional baseball team through the competition he created called “Million Dollar Arm,” promising $1 million to whoever wins and succeeds.
So, the second half of the movie is about the two leading contenders, Rinku and Dinesh, being trained in Los Angeles in a sport they know nothing about.
You see, JB believes that if he is successful, he will have created a market with a billion new fans of American baseball in India rooting for their homeboy.
Alan Arkin is also in the movie playing the same cranky oldtimer that he seems to always play these days, and Lake Bell is also in it as a potential love interest for JB.
MILLION DOLLAR ARM is not much more than just a thousand dollar movie.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Million Dollar Arm – Movie Trailer
May 21st
Based on a true story, Disney’s “Million Dollar Arm” follows JB Bernstein, a once-successful sports agent who now finds himself edged out by bigger, slicker competitors. He and his partner Aash (Aasif Mandvi) will have to close their business down for good if JB doesn’t come up with something fast. Late one night, while watching cricket being played in India on TV, JB comes up with an idea so radical it just might work. Why not go to there and find the next baseball pitching sensation? Setting off for Mumbai with nothing but a gifted but cantankerous scout (Alan Arkin) in tow, JB stages a televised, nationwide competition called “Million Dollar Arm” where 40,000 hopefuls compete before two 18-year-old finalists, Rinku and Dinesh (Suraj Sharma, Madhur Mittal), emerge as winners. JB brings them back to the United States to train with legendary pitching coach Tom House (Bill Paxton). The goal: get the boys signed to a major league team. Not only is the game itself difficult to master, but life in the U.S. with a committed bachelor makes things even more complicated-for all of them. While Rinku and Dinesh learn the finer points of baseball and American culture, they in turn teach JB the true meaning of teamwork and commitment. Ultimately, what began as a purely commercial venture becomes something more and leads JB to find the one thing he was never looking for at all-a family.
Neighbors “Bro’s before Neighbors”
May 15th
(“Bro’s before Neighbors”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
NEIGHBORS won the top spot at the box office its first weekend of release, which is another reason that this film should not be confused with the 1981 NEIGHBORS, which was John Belushi’s last film.
However, the plot about the arrival of rowdy new neighbors who disrupt the lives of a couple who are already living there is the same, except that the part of Dan Aykroyd has been replaced by an entire fraternity house led by Teddy, played by Zac Efron.
The couple are Mac and Kelly Radner, played by Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, they have a baby daughter named Stella, and when they see some of the shenanigans taking place next door at the Beta Psi Delta fraternity house, Kelly says to Mac, “Just because we have a house and a baby doesn’t mean that we’re old people.”
You see, at first Mac and Kelly envy the youthful exuberance of the fraternity boys and their parties attended by attractive college students of boys and hot-looking girls, and they go next door to welcome the new neighbors to the neighborhood.
Teddy accepts the fraternity’s new neighbors and their surprising gift and invites Mac and Kelly to the party of the moment so everything will be cool later.
Teddy tells Mac and Kelly that if any of the parties gets too noisy, they need to call the fraternity first and not the cops, which is a good indication of what is going to happen later, right?
Well, the fraternity brothers have a goal that they want to achieve, which the audience learns at the beginning of the movie, and to achieve that goal, they party every night, which causes Mac to call the police what he believes to be anonymously after he can’t get anyone at the party to pick up the phone.
Naturally, the fraternity brothers retaliate when they are told by the police that Mac called them, which they know because the police have caller ID.
And the game is on, escalating with each retaliation by the two parties, so to speak, culminating in an attempt by Mac and Kelly to interfere with the brothers’ mantra of “bro’s before ho’s” and get them to fight among themselves after a violation of Teddy’s relationship with his girlfriend.
NEIGHBORS is enjoyable, but probably only to young people.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
