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The Sandlot (1993)
The Sandlot is a film at odds with its own legacy. Its Kennedy-era setting and touchstones of retro-Americana (Babe Ruth, P.F. Flyers, ill-advised experiments with chaw) are aimed firmly at baby boomers on a nostalgia kick. However, The Sandlot is best loved today by a younger generation who rented the VHS or caught reruns on The Disney Channel. What millennial doesn’t instantly recognize and understand Ham Porter’s eternal cry of frustration, “You’re killing me, Smalls!”
The Smalls in question is Scotty Smalls (Tom Guiry), a shy preteen who moves to the San Fernando Valley in June 1962. He befriends an octet of baseball fanatics looking to round out their team (despite him knowing nothing of America’s pastime), who spend the summer getting into high jinks off-diamond. When Scotty loses his stepfather’s prized ball (signed by the Great Bambino himself), the team sets out to retrieve it from the clutches of the Beast, a massive English mastiff purported to eat anyone who trespasses in his junkyard.
Co-writer and director David Mickey Evans shot The Sandlot with a sense of Spielbergian whimsy, making the team’s adventures seem as epic as they imagine. The kids themselves, though sometimes one-note, are ably played by a cast that breathes natural life and energy into their story. The Sandlot is derivative, often simplistic and saccharine, but it can’t be denied just how well it works as a coming-of-age adventure appreciated by audiences of all stripes. Hollywood, June 14 and 15.
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