"This Use to be My Playground" - Oh, shut up Madge! (League Of Their Own, A (DVD))

Member Name: Nolly

Product:	League Of Their Own, A (DVD)
Date:	27/05/01 (50 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: authentic story?, promising idea, Geena Davis is in it!

Disadvantages: overly sentimental, Madonna is in it

It seems incredible that there was a time when women were dragged out of the kitchen to provide a service to society. It started the slippery slope towards all the equality stuff that occurs nowadays. You know that all that rubbish of equal rights and pay didn't start until the 1970's, and then the architects started building glass ceilings without telling anybody. I must say that I find these glass ceilings very troublesome, because I can't see them for some reason and then I bang my head, again! Ouch!

So what am I actually rabbiting on about? Well, to be honest I'm not actually too sure myself, but I wil continue and maybe I will make sense to myself at the end. Well, there's a first time for everything, isn't there?

Let me take you on a journey. A journey that traverses one big ocean and nearly 60 years of time. Let's go back in time to 1940s Chicago. The USA has just decided that it needs to save the world yet again, and as Bruce Willis hasn't been born yet and Clint Eastwood is just a nipper, Franklin Roosevelt sends in the troops to help those poor Brits again, paving the way for that tall clown to take over the world (no, I don't mean Ronald MacDonald, I mean George W Bush). As the majority of eligible men were conscripted, the wise men who controlled the most popular spectator sport of the time, decided that they were going to attempt to keep the baseball flag flying by achieving the unthinkable- getting women to play the game and provide the entertainment.

In 1992 there was a film made about this time in the world of baseball. 'A League of their Own' was a comedy drama about a number of women and their hopes and ambitions. It starred Geena Davis, Rosie O'Donnell, Madonna and Tom Hanks.

The film focuses at the start with two sisters, Dotty (Davis), and Kit, who are apporached by a talent scout with regard to joining the baseball league in Chicago, where four teams of ladies
are to provide the sporting entertainment for the folks back home. The are chosen to play for a team called the Rockford Peaches, and soon find that they are as much 'eye candy' as sporting professionals. The season continues, with the usual mix of arguments between the two sisters, as Dotty takes over the running of the team, particularly as the team manager (Hanks) is a perpetual drunk who thinks that the whole league is a gimmick that cannot be taken seriously. Eventually one sister is transferred to another team and the two women meet each other on opposing sides in the World Series.

The film is set in a framework, and this adds a little documentary artificiality to it. The whole basis for the story is a reunion of the team 45 years after they have disbanded, and a reunion between the two sisters, who have grown apart over the intervening times. We learn that some of the players have worn well, while others have not survived.

So what about the performances? Well, Geena Davis plays the role of a sassy woman who knows her own mind, as she tends to do in a heck of a lot of films in which she appears. Rosie O'Donnell is the brash and blousy one, while Madonna plays 'All the Way' Mae, which is an indication of the rather loose morals of her character. Hanks is annoying as the drunken manager and ex-pro baseball player. The supporting cast do a fine job, but really no better than that.

So what is the final rating of this film? Well, it is a good film, but it is not a great film. It tries to be a dramatised version of an actual story. However it wallows rather too much in sentimentality, and this detracts from its overall effectiveness.

Summary: