I wanted to like this movie. Having lived in Iowa and knowing this story fairly well, and being a big baseball fan, I felt this would be enjoyable. It wasn't.
Sometimes the low budget films have a particular charm to them. This one lacked most of that. It was poorly pieced together as a bunch of anecdotes. They couldn't focus on crucial details. The music was too much, and the editing and acting were horrible, despite having big names.
But I think what bothers me the most were the little details they glossed over... small things. A few noticeable details:
-Norway was playing a school with "Vikings" on the jersey. But the stadium said, "Home of the Knights" (Norway was the Tigers) -In the championship game, the umpires called literally every pitch from Ellis a "strike", when several were very, very much off the plate. They didn't write these to make it seem like they were bad calls (for example, no one in the crowd groaned at the calls).
-There were things pertaining to the baseball that makes one wonder if the writers have ever watched baseball? Let alone, 1A baseball in po-dunk Iowa... From things like the way the coach swung and managed to hit a massive home run or the effortlessness of a pitcher throwing 95 on the black.
It sounds petty, but I firmly believe that writers who do these things well do them because they take their audience seriously. I don't feel the writers of "The Final Season" took us seriously. And it shows.
Sometimes the low budget films have a particular charm to them. This one lacked most of that. It was poorly pieced together as a bunch of anecdotes. They couldn't focus on crucial details. The music was too much, and the editing and acting were horrible, despite having big names.
But I think what bothers me the most were the little details they glossed over... small things. A few noticeable details:
-Norway was playing a school with "Vikings" on the jersey. But the stadium said, "Home of the Knights" (Norway was the Tigers) -In the championship game, the umpires called literally every pitch from Ellis a "strike", when several were very, very much off the plate. They didn't write these to make it seem like they were bad calls (for example, no one in the crowd groaned at the calls).
-There were things pertaining to the baseball that makes one wonder if the writers have ever watched baseball? Let alone, 1A baseball in po-dunk Iowa... From things like the way the coach swung and managed to hit a massive home run or the effortlessness of a pitcher throwing 95 on the black.
It sounds petty, but I firmly believe that writers who do these things well do them because they take their audience seriously. I don't feel the writers of "The Final Season" took us seriously. And it shows.