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'Game': not quite a new fall classic

Director Sam Raimi and writer Dana Stevens must have thought they had all their bases covered with "For Love of the Game": romance for the ladies, sports for the guys and, of course, star Kevin Costner's track record with baseball-themed movies ("Bull Durham" and "Field of Dreams").

But while it's nice to see Costner back on the mound instead of battling the apocalypse, it's not enough to make the movie feel complete.

For one thing, there's not enough baseball to really make "Game" feel like a baseball movie. Billy Chapel (Costner), a 40-year-old pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, is one of those characters on the edge. He guns for an utterly implausible perfect game at Yankee Stadium on the last day of the season - just after learning that he's about to be traded and that his girlfriend, single mother Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston) is leaving him for a new job in London.

This is where the other part of the movie comes up short as well - there's not enough romance either. Costner exudes almost no charm in his scenes with Preston.

And he desperately needs to, because the audience is stuck trying to come up with a reason to root for Billy and Jane. Like most cardboard sports heroes in the movies, Billy must struggle to decide which is more important - his love life or his career.

Raimi develops Billy and Jane's five-year relationship through a series of annoying, haphazard cuts between the present and flashbacks to the past. From their cute, circumstantial meeting, their relationship is marred by Jane's difficulty adjusting to the life of a baseball player.

For the most part, Billy makes his career his top priority, so he and Jane fight a lot. Then Jane gets mad and runs away or Billy has to leave for another road trip. But it's obvious that Billy loves Jane, because every time the two are together Costner makes Billy a cranky soul with a perpetual pout.

The bigger question is this: Why does Jane keep coming back? She has a teenage daughter (Jena Malone) and her own career (as a magazine writer / editor). "For Love of the Game" spends more than enough time glimpsing Billy's life as a professional athlete; it would have been nice to see Jane at work as well. The viewer has no sense of what drives her to do anything: A cartoon would have served virtually the same purpose as her character.

The film's supporting players are the ones who've really got "Game." Malone displays perfect control as Heather Aubrey. Her character is, just like everything else in the movie, pretty stock: the precocious child who's wiser than everyone around her. Yet Heather's fear of dependence makes her the film's most endearing character. Additionally, the dependably great John C. Reilly provides comic relief as catcher Gus Sinski.

Sports movies work when they provide a sense of urgency and suspense. Will the team win? Will Billy finally work things out with Jane? Or will he sacrifice everything for the game? Raimi provides no such adrenaline rush. There's no kinetic energy here, just a bunch of people sitting and waiting for over two hours to discover who will strike out.

That honor belongs to the director.

Grade: C-

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