Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake, Matthew Lillard and John Goodman star in the latest inspirational-baseball film, “Trouble with the Curve.” The film is about an old-fashioned scout (Eastwood) who is starting to become weary with eye-trouble, and the rocky relationship with his daughter (Adams) that has a chance to be saved when she decides to help him on his final scouting journey.
Eastwood plays Gus Lobel, scout for the Atlanta Braves. The Braves organization gives him one last chance to prove that he can handle himself in a business, ultimately changing to include the use of computers and technology. “A computer can’t tell if the kid’s got instincts,” Eastwood’s character said in a trailer, available at troublewiththecurve.warnerbros.com.
Adams plays Mickey Lobel, a lawyer on the fast track to becoming partner, but puts that everything in jeopardy when she ignores her father’s wishes to work alone, and travels with him to North Carolina. The back-story around the Lobel family is that Mickey’s mother died when she was only six, and, instead of taking control of the situation and doing what he could for his daughter, Gus sent her away.
John Goodman plays Gus’s boss and good friend Pete Klein, whose idea it was for Mickey to travel to NC with her father. He does not want to see Gus lose his job, but he knows there are circumstances out of his control occurring.
The curve ball in this film is Johnny Flanagan, played by Justin Timberlake. Johnny is a scout for a rival baseball team, but, despite that, keeps a good relationship with Gus, considering Gus is the man who recruited him when he first got into the game.
Eastwood’s first acting project since 2008’s “Gran Torino,” “Trouble with the Curve” received 3 out of 4 positive reviews by critics on metacritic.com. Todd McCarthy with The Hollywood Reporter writes, “Eastwood is vastly entertaining as an old-fashioned scout who disdains computers and fancy statistical charts in favor of his own time-tested instincts,” and Boxoffice Magazine’s Pete Hammond states, “Clint Eastwood and a superb cast hit it out of the park in Trouble With The Curve, a great entertainment filled with heart, humor, family drama and fantastic acting.”
It was an article from The Playlist that described the film as “Lacking narrative momentum, saddled with thin characterizations and uninspired plotting, Trouble With The Curve should’ve stayed on the bench.”
Directed by Robert Lorenz, this is the first film Eastwood has starred in since 1993’s “In the Line of Fire” that he has not also directed. Eastwood is a producer along with Lorenz and Michele Weisler.
The film opens in theatres everywhere tomorrow.
By Taylor Zimmerman