‘Ancient’ Hamm makes grade
MOVIE REVIEW: MILLION DOLLAR ARM Matt Lawrey’s MOVIE REVIEW
The older I get, the more I like hearing about people who found success later in life. People like New Zealand novelist Jenny Pattrick, who was 62 when her first book The Denniston Rose was published.
Overseas examples include Colonel Sanders who founded Kentucky Fried Chicken at the age of 65, Cezanne who did his best paintings in his 60s, and Golda Meir who was 70 when she became prime minister of Israel.
Thirty-six might not sound very old to become a leading man, but in Hollywood it’s positively ancient.
That’s how old Jon Hamm was when he was cast in the career-making role of Don Draper for the TV series Mad Men.
Hamm was chosen from more than 80 candidates and had to audition seven times for the part because a network executive was worried he wasn’t sexy enough.
Seven award-winning series of Mad Men under his belt and Hamm’s big screen career is revving up with the release of Million Dollar Arm (PG), the first decent-sized film in which he is the undisputed star.
It’s a Disney production based on the true story of US sports agent JB Bernstein who went to India looking for poten- tial baseball stars and discovered pitchers Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, young men who went on to have professional careers in the States.
Part Jerry Maguire, part The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Million Dollar Arm is a nice story competently told.
The film opens with JB preparing to pitch his company’s services to its biggest prospective client.
Not surprisingly his overture falls on deaf ears and JB finds his business flailing.
Depressed, disillusioned and disheartened he has a light bulb moment one night while channel surfing.
The result: Million Dollar Arm, an Indian reality television show giving contestants a shot at a career in professional baseball.
I’ve only ever been to one pro baseball game in my life and, to be honest, I found it even more boring than cricket.
That said, the Americans do have a gift for making enjoyable baseball-themed movies.
From The Natural and Bull Durham to Field of Dreams and Moneyball, baseball and Hollywood have something of a symbiotic relationship, a bit like Hollywood and the military but not as worrying.
Million Dollar Arm isn’t in the same
league of those aforementioned films but it does have several things going for it.
All the Indian actors, including Aasif Mandvi as JB’s business partner, Suraj Sharma as Singh, Madhur Mittal as Patel and Pitobash Tripathy as a baseball fanatic hired by JB are great.
Mandvi, Sharma and Mittal deliver performances that are natural, warm and unaffected.
Providing the comic relief, Tripathy manages to be both over-the-top and credible.
Million Dollar Arm also gets a boost from the presence of the fabulous Lake Bell as JB’s tenant and love interest.
Bell is one of those actresses who should be a household name but for some cruel twist of fate has yet to achieve the status she deserves.
Smart, empathetic, athletic, funny and possessed of great timing, Bell lifts every scene she is in.
The reliable Alan Arkin and Bill Paxton also appear as an eccentric scout and an intellectual coach.
For his part Hamm is likeable and believable.
JB is shortsighted, selfish, at times more than a little desperate, but fundamentally a good person.
It’s not a performance that will set the world on fire but it does demonstrate that there is more to Hamm than the role that made him famous.