Wednesday, July 6, 2016

A League of Their Own (1992)

Pretty sure this was my first viewing in at least twenty years. The danger with such big gaps is that sometimes the film that is actually in front of you doesn't live up to the memory. Luckily for me, I remembered very little of this film. I remembered stuff like "No crying in baseball" and some of the Rosie O'Donnell goofing around (because that's the kind of stuff that appeals to a prepubescent boy who hasn't yet turned into a horn-dog) but much of the rest felt brand new to me. What I was really taken by was the extremely minimal plot. Essentially this is a hang-out movie. The film is enjoyable because we enjoy these characters and like spending time with them. It's also a great look at the gulf between image and reality. By contrasting how these women actually lived and behaved with the staged photos and newsreels that went out to the world, Penny Marshall and her collaborators are subtly chipping away at the conservative idealization of the past. It's not a film with a radical, feminist agenda, but it does have something to say, and it says it well.

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