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Bull Durham (1988) Every season, Annie (Susan Sarandon) picks up one of the Durham Bulls
baseball team and gives him the summer of his life, which involves extreme
sex, forced readings from Walt Whitman, Edith Piaf records, lots of
candles and advice that will put the lucky guy in the Sports Hall of
Fame. This year, she's torn between 'Nuke' LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), a
young pitcher 'with a million dollar arm and a five cent head', and
Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), an almost-was great catcher on the point
of retirement. Davis leaves her to LaLoosh, whom he has been hired to
turn into a human being, but star billing alone suggests this isn't
the romantic team we can expect at the fade-out. Even if your automatic
reaction to Bull Durham is 'I don't want to go see
a movie about baseball, fahcrissake' you should make the effort to catch
this witty, charming, funny and oddly unforgettable picture. Director
and ex-ball-player Ron Shelton cut his teeth as the writer of Under
Fire and the excellent released-only-to-video American Football
movie The Best of Times, and this is his semi-autobiographical
personal project. As a sports movie, it manages to work for an audience
who don't know a catcher's mitt from astroturf without resorting to
let's-win-for-the-Gipper devices. And as a bizarre romance, it's consistently
affecting and comes complete with more quotable lines to the minute
than any other comedy in recent memory. Kevin Costner is rumpled and
endearing in his best role to date, and is admirably partnered by the
always wonderful Susan Sarandon - memorably in an extended making-out
scene to the tune of 'Sixty Minute Man' - and the marvellously
stupid Robbins, who starts out referring to his pitching as 'radical
in a tubular kind of way' before being schooled in the fine art of baseball
clichés. The best American sports film since The Bad
News Bears and one of the few films ever to suggest that intelligence
in a woman is sexy. First Published In: City Limits (issue unknown) Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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