Directed By Marty Roberts and Jimmy Womble

Starring – Brett Varvel, Todd Terry, Raphael Ruggero

The Plot – When a small-town baseball coach (Varvel) gets the offer of a lifetime from a larger 6A High School, he uproots his family and leaves the only home he’s ever known. But as a man of faith, he soon faces extreme opposition to his coaching methods from the school superintendent.

Rated PG for thematic content, some violence and mild adult language.

Running the Bases – Official Trailer – In Theaters September 16, 2022 – YouTube

POSITIVES

Let’s stick with the first half of the movie, because it is during that time when the film felt most prominent with some surprisingly complimentary elements in its corner. For starters, the script is able to allude the predictable tropes of the sports genre that ties many of these films together, like the lovable losers’ tag, the sudden transformation that makes them winners, and the one-dimensional characterization that limits their appeal to when the script absolutely requires them to appear. Instead, this team are very much winners to begin with, and only start to sag in quality when some unforeseen suspensions force them to temporarily lose some of their best players. In addition to this, the cast of characters are highly likeable and full of personality that lends itself entirely to the comedic consistency of the material during initial engagements, even managing to churn a few hearty laughs from this cold-hearted critic in ways that made my experience an enjoyable one. This is most pertaining to Varvel, who is not only the single best performance of the entire film, but also the pulse for the material that at least initially feels tame and professional when coming from his perspective. Varvel carves out a heart and humanity for Luke that makes him the ideal protagonist, and when combined with his passion for the game of baseball and Christ, he’s able to tap into some of the dramatic heavy lifting seamlessly, in a way that feels natural in the way he manufactures the material.

NEGATIVES

The kind of tropes that this film isn’t able to allude is that of the religious subgenre, with the typically expected alienating quality of material sending the film’s second half into a dramatic nosedive, in terms of quality. Not only does the film preach in ways that singles out those who are not on board with its method of lifestyle, but it also contrives the plot in ways that completely silences the baseball narrative for a final half hour that is almost entirely a deconstruction of contemporary times. This is where paranoia starts to set in, as again the makers of the film feel like religion is being persecuted in public. So much so that a character continuously gets fined and even arrested for praying on field. The religious aspects could capably hold a respectable presence over the material, as it did during the first half, but it soils the opportunity with heavy-handed intentions and lunacy during the climax, making this an arduous and painfully ridiculous sit. This is further cemented with the movie’s pacing, which with a just over two hour run time feels double of that when the film is grounded by its one-dimensional aspect of storytelling. Whenever the script focuses on baseball, the religion is omitted, and when it’s focused on religion, the baseball is non-existent. This singular source of storytelling makes it difficult to evade repetition, but more importantly maintain the urgency of the pacing, slipping it into sedation by forcing it to choose between one or the other, without cherishing each of them simultaneously to prolong its lifespan. In addition to this, the technical merits completely underwhelm on the sporting documentation, with horrendous editing and direction making it difficult to buy into these actors as legitimate athletes. The former intrudes quite often by pasting as many short cuts as possible to make one cohesive sequence, but it comes across as disjointed and jarring, and the latter is uninspiring with the crowds surrounding the game, which lead to a few unintentionally humorous interactions. One such example is in one of the main characters collapsing on the field, and for the next two cuts we still see the crowds cheering him on. This happens more than once during the film and speaks volumes about how each of them is steered to feeling a distinct emotion, which in turn makes each of them feel like monotonous robots, without a shred of parody or heart between them. Speaking of emotion, the melodramatic aspects of this film are embarrassingly laughable, with secondary cast members who simply shouldn’t be flexing their dramatic muscles. Sometimes that lends itself to emotional outbursts that quite literally come out of nowhere, with a volume-swelling musical score spoon-feeding its sentiments, while other times they come across as disingenuous when the magnitude of their meandering unable to squeeze out a single solitary tear for the cause. Finally, the script itself is realized as a bit of a mess the longer the film persists, with many subplots and even characters vanished in thin air. This could be a result of the various abrupt time shifts forward, but the primary romance is underdeveloped, the brothers’ father and mother evade the entirety of the film’s second and third acts, and Luke’s son inspires a love triangle with a teammate that does eventually comes to blows, but then never pursues matters further with the developing bond we’re told he has attained with the interested female. It’s strange that a film that clocks in at two hours has any trouble juggling various subplots, but when the script only institutes them to emit a temporary conflict, it illustrates its complete lack of depth, in turn creating a never-ending black hole with its own conflicts with logic.

OVERALL
“Running the Bases” strikes out with another heavy-handed sermon that hinders the emotional and creative growth that the religious subgenre of films was accomplishing in recent months. Though the material injects a few effective gags of humor, as well as a gravitational turn from Varvel at the helm that keeps it momentarily tolerable, the highly inferior second half renders its already ineffective sports angle unnecessary, with a climax that feels like it was practically lifted from one of the various “God’s Not Dead” installments.

My Grade: 4/10 or D-