# Legend of Bagger Vance, The (2000)

### reviewed by
Berge Garabedian

    THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE
    RATING: 6/10 --> Barely recommendable

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Why do people always insist on trying to make me like golf? It's like those folks at weddings who always try to get everyone else to dance, when they obviously don't want to. Hey man, leave me alone, I don't want to dance and I don't want to play golf! Feels like a strange "cult-like" thing or something. When I was in business school, it was all about "you gotta play golf to mix business with pleasure". When I joined the corporate world, it was all about "you gotta play golf to suck up to the managers" and even now, my married friends will come around and say "you gotta play golf man, it's not as boring as it looks on TV".

Well, I've taken a couple of swings at the ball, never played a real game, but still don't feel any need to wake up at 6am and club a little white ball for hours on end. Just not my style. And even though THE FIELD OF DREAMS actually made me feel like playing baseball, this film STILL was not able to convince me of any so-called "magic" connected to the game. But maybe I'm just not holding my driver the right way...

PLOT: A guy who used to be a great golfer goes to war and loses his touch. He returns in shame, abandons the girl he loved dearly and drinks himself silly until a local golf tournament needs him to raise the spirits of the townspeople. At that point, a figure by the name of Bagger Vance helps the man regain some of his old self-confidence, take a shot at the tournament and his old glory.

CRITIQUE: This movie wasn't bad but I honestly expected a deeper meaning behind it all, a bigger inspiration to go out and do something great in my own life, or in the very least, a little magic. Unfortunately, none of that came through in this movie, a film which looked great and felt good, but ultimately didn't say much to me. The acting was solid across the board, but nobody really stood out. The message of the movie was nice, but nothing to change your perspective as such. The costumes were beautiful, the décor authentic and even the golf courses majestic, all perfect accoutrements for the events unfolding around them, but for me, most of the story seemed pretty predictable from the start and nothing particularly fantastical or surprising took me aback during the entire picture. Perhaps the film will mean more to golf fans. I don't know. Perhaps there is a much greater, deeper inspirational thought or message that I didn't pick up on. Not sure.

All's I know is that unlike the viewing of an actual game of golf, this film did not bore me out my skull, and did manage to sustain my attention for its entire two-hour run, so all in all, not bad. I didn't particularly care for Will Smith's character, who I thought was a little too "nagging" and "glib" to be of any inspiration to anyone, but he eventually managed to lighten up, so no major harm done there. One thing that didn't grow on me was this one particular continuity issue which just bothered me throughout. If Matt Damon's character was supposed to have been this great golfer back in the day, why is it that when he returns to the game all those years later, he is still decades younger than the top golfers of that time? The fact that Damon's character was this aged golfer who didn't look a day over 25 just struck me as very odd and somewhat distracting. Or was that just me? Anyway, other than that, the film was okay but nothing to go out of your way to see on the big screen. Catch it on video and see Theron perfect the art of crying in cinema, Smith finally show a little range as a dramatic character and Damon, well, he's a good actor but a little too typecast for my taste. A great looking picture with great looking people, a sad-sack romance, some dopey lines and a so-so plot line. Interest you any?

    Review Date: November 3, 2000
    Director: Robert Redford
    Writer: Jeremy Leven
    Producers: Robert Redford, Michael Nozik, Jake Eberts
    Actors: Matt Damon as Rannulph Junuh
    Will Smith as Bagger Vance
    Charlize Theron as Adele Invergordon
    Genre: Drama
    Year of Release: 2000
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    (c) 2000 Berge Garabedian

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