Fresh
At two-plus hours, The Rookie is a good 20 minutes too long, but for father-son teams waiting eagerly for the umpire's "Play ball!", it's an uplifting season opener.
Jack Mathews, New York Daily News
The Rookie
Sometimes dreams come back to life.
2002 · 2h 7m · G
Drama, Family
Directed by
John Lee Hancock
Overview
Jim Morris never made it out of the minor leagues before a shoulder injury ended his pitching career twelve years ago. Now a married-with-children high-school chemistry teacher and baseball coach in Texas, Jim's team makes a deal with him: if they win the district championship, Jim will try out with a major-league organization. The bet proves incentive enough for the team, and they go from worst to first, making it to state for the first time in the history of the school. Jim, forced to live up to his end of the deal, is nearly laughed off the try-out field--until he gets onto the mound, where he confounds the scouts (and himself) by clocking successive 98 mph fastballs, good enough for a minor-league contract with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Jim's still got a lot of pitches to throw before he makes it to The Show, but with his big-league dreams revived, there's no telling where he could go.
Director and cast
- John Lee Hancock Director
- Dennis Quaid as Jimmy Morris
- Rachel Griffiths as Lorri Morris
- Beth Grant as Olline
- Angus T. Jones as Hunter Morris
- Brian Cox as Jim Morris Sr.
- Chad Lindberg as Joe David West
- Angelo Spizzirri as Joel De La Garza
- Jay Hernandez as Joaquin 'Wack' Campos
- Royce D. Applegate as Henry
- Rick Gonzalez as Rudy Bonilla
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
84%
Tomatometer
Fresh
Morris ultimately lasted two partial seasons in the majors, and the film's rendering of his minor-league struggle is so enjoyable you want to see more of that and less of the everyday life preceding it.
David Germain, Associated Press
Fresh
Though Hancock traffics in a lot of bogus small-town sentiment, The Rookie exhibits a refreshingly honest understanding of baseball as a job, with long road trips away from home and a workmanlike routine.
Scott Tobias, AV Club
Fresh
It's Quaid and his fellow actors, Rachel Griffiths and Brian Cox, who lift the film out of its intermittent doldrums, and together they deliver that rare thing: a nuanced sports movie.
Bruce Diones, New Yorker
Fresh
Until The Rookie came along, I'd forgotten how good and smart a family film can be.
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
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