Trailer Trashin’: Clint Eastwood is Back in Trouble with the Curve

Sports movies have been a staple of Hollywood for a long time, all the way back to the silent era. And considering that the 2012 Summer Olympics just wrapped up, it is appropriate that this week marks the first time a sports film has been covered by Trailer Trashin’ – the upcoming Clint Eastwood baseball drama Trouble with the Curve.

Premise: An aging Atlanta Braves baseball scout named Gus (Clint Eastwood) sets out to discover if he still has value as a scout and as a dad. Gus’ daughter Nicky (Amy Adams) reluctantly agrees to come along to help him on a final recruiting trip to scout a new top prospect, Bo Gentry (Joe Massingill). Along the way, Gus reconnects with Johnny (Justin Timberlake), a scout for a rival team who has been friends with Gus since Gus scouted him when Johnny was a baseball player. But Johnny also has an interest in Nicky, which Gus does not approve of.

My take: What can be said about Clint Eastwood that hasn’t already been said? He’s more than an actor, even more than a movie star, he’s an icon. And as his career has gone on, he has proven himself to also be an extremely talented director, helming films of many different types, from Firefox (1982) to Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) and everything in between. If nothing else, his new film is noteworthy for being Eastwood’s first acting project since Gran Torino (2008), and the first film he’s starred in but did not direct since In the Line of Fire (1993). Trouble with the Curve is the directorial debut of Robert Lorenz, who has acted as an assistant director and producer on many of Eastwood’s films since the mid-1990s. Considering that Eastwood is at the point where he probably will never have to take a job just to collect a paycheck, him agreeing to star in someone else’s movie is really a mark in that movie’s favor.

The cast here looks really good. Clint Eastwood is always incredibly watchable, and he seems like he’s enjoying himself here in his role as Gus, and I like that he’s somewhat poking fun at his own tough guy persona. Amy Adams is one of the most charismatic and talented young actresses working today, and she looks like she’ll hold her own here. As much as people make fun of Justin Timberlake for getting his start in a boy band, he’s proven that he is a legitimately talented actor, and I’m interested to see how he plays off against Eastwood. Matthew Lillard looks appropriately smug as young rival scout Tom Silver. I was also pleasantly surprised to see John Goodman, who plays Gus’ friend and fellow baseball scout Pete Klein. Goodman is having one hell of a year – in addition to Trouble with the Curve, he’s doing a voice in ParaNorman and appearing in Robert Zemeckis’ Flight and Ben Affleck’s Argo. Robert Patrick also makes a brief appearance, and it’s always nice to see him.

Even though I’m not a baseball fan, I do like the story they’ve laid out here. Sure, the elderly parent reconnecting with an estranged child is not a new idea, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done well. Also, I love it when movies depict intergenerational friendships, so I really like the aspect of Eastwood and Timberlake’s characters being buddies of a sort. And I like it when movies offer a look at some aspect of culture or society that I don’t know much about – in this case, baseball scouting – so that’s another thing about the film that interests me.

However, there were a couple things I wasn’t crazy about. A couple of the lines struck me as a little too on-the-nose (Amy Adams’ “dysfunctional sense of responsibility” in particular stood out). And while I like the sort of sentimental tone the movie is going for, that kind of thing can become annoyingly saccharine is mishandled. But given the talent of the cast, and all the directorial skills Lorenz presumably learned from working on Eastwood’s films, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

While this isn’t a movie that screams “must see it at the theater” for me, I think it looks quite good. The tone looks fun, Eastwood and the rest of the cast are great, and this could be a great debut for first-time director Lorenz. If you’re looking for a fun, heartfelt family drama this fall, you should check out Trouble with the Curve.

ANTICIPATION: I probably won’t see it at the theater, but I’ll definitely check it out at some point.

Release Date: September 21st, 2012

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake, Matthew Lillard, John Goodman, Robert Patrick, Scott Eastwood, and Joe Massingill
Director: Robert Lorenz
Writer: Randy Brown

P.S. Of course, I do know that the teaser for Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty was also released in the last week. While I think it looks interesting, there’s really not enough for me to write a whole column about. More to the point, I don’t feel like wading into that potential minefield of controversy. I’ll wait to see what the next trailer is like.

P.P.S. This past week also the release of the first trailer for the long-delayed remake of Red Dawn (1985). And guess what? It looks just as bland and forgettable as I expected.