# Angels in the Outfield (1994)

### reviewed by
John Walker

                              ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD
                           A film review by John Walker
                            Copyright 1994 John Walker

My form of "rating": I started boring people with my comments/praise as soon as I could; I think I bored practically everybody at work. Also, the main theme stuck with me for a couple of hours after I left the show. I probably have to get the soundtrack.

In Brief: As ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD itself says: you've got to *believe*:

                You've got to have faith.  You've got to believe.  You've
         got to look inside yourselves.

If you don't believe, nothing's going to happen. If you do, one miracle comin' up. You're about to get a dose of sentiment the like of which the '50s could only try to imitate, and the like of which succeeding decades have seldom even *tried* to imitate.

         Forget sophisticated cynicism.  Forget most of this century.  If
         you're willing to get into it, ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD will let
         you go back to a time that believed in itself and in us.  If all
         hope is a lie, maybe it's good to go back to a time that hadn't
         been clued in yet.  Or if it knew, didn't care, and was willing
         to tell "reality" to stuff it.

                                <>

ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD is a remake of the 1951 flick of the same name. (I don't run numbers, but I'll note that Leonard Maltin gives the original three stars; Steven Scheuer gives it three and a half.)

Roger Bowman (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), ten years old or so, is in a temporary foster-care situation in the home of Maggie Nelson (Brenda Fricker). Roger is a fan of the rock-bottom total-losers last-place Los Angeles Angels; his mother's dead; his apparently 20-something father just isn't up to handling a kid. After a rare meeting with his father, in which he's been told that he's being handed over to the courts, Roger asks his father:

                "Dad, when are we gonna be a family again?"

                "From where I'm sittin'--I'd say when the Angels win the
           pennant."

For his father, it's offbeat way to say never. But Roger takes it more literally. That's what he prays for that night--not even sure whether there's a God, he or she, much less whether there are angels.

Of course, angels show up the next day, led by Al (Christopher Lloyd). Of course, only Roger can see them. Of course, the angels make the Angels win the game.

The ill-tempered manager of the Angels, George Knox (Danny Glover) can see that *something* odd has happened, and he finds out that Roger can "see angels". Roger and his younger cohort at Maggie's, J.P. (Milton Davis, Jr), become sort of mascots--with Knox basically following Roger's signals.

The angels have their work cut out for them with a team of flakes and goof balls--and a formerly great pitcher, Mel Clark (Tony Danza), who only wants a chance to get back on the mound. As the team turns around with angelic boosting, the nearest this film has to a villain is Ranch Wilder (Jay O. Sanders)--the Angels' announcer ("The *Voice* of the Angels"), who tries to put down Knox and the team at every opportunity.

                       <>

It's on the tube, but I don't think I've ever seen the original version of ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD. (Although maybe I have--because one line hit me with deja vu all over again. [And that, I think, will be my *only* "baseball metaphor" in this review.]) Turner Entertainment owns it now, and apparently it's *not* on video. I hope they bring it out.

This 1994 ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD doesn't feel like a "remake" so much as a "re-creation". Yes, it's set in the '90s. Yes, it's updated a bit. But its values, its outlook, its sentiments, and everything about it are really from a time when Hollywood more or less actually believed in the values and outlook of ordinary nobodies. Even when Hollywood didn't really believe, it exulted in expressing those views -- doing so as a sort of noblesse oblige.

This was, this *is*, a 1940s film. (Ignore the technicality of the 1951 date: The '50s didn't begin until noon, January 20, 1953.)

Almost needless to say, this '94 version came from Walt Disney Pictures.

                               <>

There are some nice touches in the updating, by the way. One updating will probably go unnoticed, and even reinforces the hopefulness-quotient. Jackie Robinson had only just broken the color bar--in what? '48? '49? But now the *manager* is black (as is Roger's sidekick, J.P.). An utterly trivial point, some might say, but nice.

So also, the presence of a team called the Angels provided a nice opportunity. (Dare I say a godsend?) In 1951, the team was the Pittsburgh Pirates--perhaps chosen because it was the most *anti*-angelic name available at the time!

In other respects, there's a slight amount more of contemporary realism. In descriptions of the 1951 film, Roger is an orphan. Now, there's an absent father who can't cope.

Someone who knows the '51 version would have to comment on any other changes. The important thing is that the *values* seem to have stayed the same.

                         <>

         Well, do you *like* those values?  Are they *yours*?

When you see MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET, do you see it as only a sort of traditional Christmas thing? Or do you really *like* it? Do you figure it says something, however sappy, that needs to be said? Do you want *more*? Do you want it *now*?

If you *do*, I think ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD will be a no-compromises triumph for you. (Have your parents [or grandparents] grumbled that "they don't make 'em like they used to"? If they don't try to see this on the big screen, you're gonna be able to hold it over their heads forever. They weren't willing to put their money where their mouth was.)

If you're undecided, well, ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD will be a test case. Terms like "shameless manipulation" may come to mind. To which I which only respond, well, *yes*! But shameless manipulation that's *honest* shameless manipulation! Shameless manipulation that's *integral* to the whole film! Shameless manipulation where it would *betray* the whole spirit and soul of the film if it *weren't* there!

         Ah, but what if you don't really like those values?

         If so, you're gonna have *major* problems with ANGELS IN THE
    OUTFIELD.

Let's face it, lots of people approve of the values of the '30s and '40s so long as those values are safely restricted to the '30s and '40s. If those values show up in a '90s film, then that film is felt to be a *lie*. Supposedly, *no one* can believe those things any more -- they *must* be lying! Even a remake has to be "intellectually" updated, according to this view.

And even many folks who are not so puritanically modernistic still cannot quite bring themselves to go along. Yes, they feel, it might even be *better* if we could believe that stuff again--but, sigh, well, who can? We can suspend disbelief in events, even angels; but we can't suspend disbelief in values, attitudes, and outlooks--even for a remake.

                               <>

I'm trying to find something wrong with ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD.

         Well, it ain't in the acting, anyway.

Gordon-Levitt carries a large chunk of the film. He plays Roger as all eagerness and hope at some times, and dealing with a basically painful, lousy situation at others. Given the role, he doesn't have to deliver a gigantic range, but he projects Roger's emotions effectively throughout. He gives us a kid who may not understand what's going on, but he wants it to work. (He seems familiar. I can't place where. I have to assume it's from some minor role or from one of my occasional glimpses at the tube. But it's sort of fun to imagine he might resemble a kid in some 50- or 60-year-old flick!)

Glover handles the manager's role easily. He's able to be the hard charger who checked his heart at the door, and then learn to ease up--if only, at first, not to offend the angels! Fricker just radiates basic common sense and decency. Lloyd is suitably wacky as Al. Danza is convincing in a dramatic role as the pitcher hanging on tenacity and willpower, even while his arm is finding the job harder and harder to do. Sanders is particularly neat as the creep we're hoping to see fall on his face. His performance gave me one of the few times when I could understand the idea of "the guy you love to hate".

Davis makes his sweet little J.P. basically believable as well as likable. I think some may find the sweet a bit strong, but this is a '40s remake. (Let's face it, this film would be great for a suitable '40s "New Yorker" cartoon--with director William Dear prompting Davis or Gordon-Levitt: "In *this* take, I want you to *pluck* their heartstrings rather than *tug* them!")

Some of the team may be a little hard to take--they're divided between modern and ethnic baseball-player types and types straight out of 45-years-ago comedies. (The types have never really left comedy, but again I'd like to see the original to see how much is *directly* from the past.)

I suppose for at least some of us who *like* the '30s-'40s sweetness and light, the too-obvious comic figures might be the first candidate for expendability. But the original is from the era of the Bowery Boys and other staples who make its stereotypes look modest by comparison. If I have to put up with a few details that I think went too far, that's a small price to pay for the rest of the film.

The screenplay is by Dorothy Kingsley, George Wells, and Holly Goldberg. I've got to see the original if only to see what they changed. The music, by the way, is by Randy Edelman. It moves nicely between upbeat "contemporary" for some of the game scenes, and a full cinematic treatment for maximum effect.

                              <>

So, where does that leave us? Is the '94 version of ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD an anachronism? *Of course!* Is it wallowing in sentiment? *Undoubtedly!* Is it "unrealistic"? *Certainly!*

But let it never be forgotten that those are *not* criticisms. For some of us, they're not even mere descriptions. They're virtues. With a film like this, I like it not in spite of the fact that it is "false", but *because* of it. I can admire both CAMILLE CLAUDEL and ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD: one for telling a painful truth, the other for defying the same sort of truth.

I don't expect angels to swoop down and get my work done for me. God doesn't do dishes or fix flats. But some mornings, just getting up can be said to be a miracle, and plausible evidence of divine intervention.

It is precisely because ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD is impossible that it is hopeful; it is because it is false, that it is true.

End of basic review. Comments requiring spoilers follow.

    Spoilers follow.

                       <>

One has to be careful of a religious issue like spoilers, so I decided not to mention that if you saw the trailers, you got a synopsis up through the climax. At least when I saw it, I *knew* what was going to happen. (Although maybe that was subliminal memory from a forgotten viewing)

         What's the specific spoiler in the trailer?

         Well, I'm not going to give *everything* away!

A more interesting spoiler concerns the ending itself. Yes, I *wanted* Roger's father to come back with a miracle. But this is a very fine ending--and perhaps better from the '40s-sentiment point of view. My tribute to the film (almost a "rating") is that I didn't think of either the problem or its resolution until *after* I was out of the theater.

The funny thing was, that after I left the ending left me all upbeat and whatnot, I suddenly turned somber.

Knox is black, Roger is white. Aren't most jurisdictions cool on interracial adoption? The neat thing, of course, is that J.P.'s being black finesses at least part of the problem. Moreover, it's a black adult adopting a white kid. It's not the problem of a minority kid's sense of identity being swamped in a majority family in a majority culture. It's the minority guy who's the rescuer, even as the adult was rescued, in spirit, by the kid. Two very nice reversals, I think.

Intriguingly, this is something a popular '40s flick could never address. The facts just weren't there. The worlds were too separate. Again, Jackie Robinson had only just started playing in the majors.

Again, I don't think anyone necessarily *thought* about any of this. They might even have decided, "Hey, let's have a black manager," as an obvious way to update the film. The bottom line, though, is that it had to be someone like Glover--who was a good choice for the role. Perhaps someone decided to make J.P. black in response, but I suspect it was all no big deal.

         In any event, it provides a very nice echo of the '40s.

The '40s were not unaware of the difficult balance between groups keeping their own identity, and yet working together and recognizing one another's worth. This was the heyday of ethnic politics. And then and since then, we've always had to deal with the tendencies to obliterate the differences in forced conformity, or to rule some groups out of the community, or to split up into warring camps. Presumably, there has to be a better way.

ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD just ignores the problem and focuses on the simply human. That resolution *fits*. It's the sort of thing that fits in with the whole spirit of the film. Unnoticed, perhaps even unconsciously, the people who put together the remake added something that could only be added nearly 45 years after the original.

If it's impossible, that's what makes it hopeful. If it's false, that's what makes it true.

    John Walker
    walkerj@access.digex.net

    .

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