Everyone's Hero

This animated atrocity about a kid living in the shadow of Yankee Stadium during the Depression also features a talking baseball, a stolen bat and Babe Ruth. So dopey and convoluted, even six-year-olds will have a hard time suspending disbelief.

By Skylaire Alfvegren Sep 15, 2006 7:00 AMTags

 

Sadly, it should've stayed there. Yankee can't play ball; he finds Screwie, a disgruntled talking baseball (ace whiner Rob Reiner) in the neighborhood sandlot. The ball advises Yankee to "get another hobby."

Darlin' (Whoopi Goldberg), Yankee star Babe Ruth's prized bat, is surreptitiously stolen from the locker room by Lefty (William H. Macy), a crooked Chicago Cubs pitcher. Yankee just happens to spy this as he's bringing his father, a stadium caretaker, lunch--but his dad gets canned in the fracas and blames his son. Yankee sets out to catch Lefty, find the bat and return it to Babe Ruth in time for the 1932 World Series, thereby hoping to restore: Babe's hitting prowess, his father's job and his image in his father's eyes--in one grand slam.

Managing a little warm-and-fuzzy by the end, the story is so dopily convoluted that even six-year-olds will have a hard time suspending their disbelief. Perhaps these filmmakers ought to take Screwie's advice to Yankee and "get another hobby."

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