January Movie Club Selection: Field of Dreams

1989 baseball fantasy

Rating: 11/20

Plot: After a choppy backstory that explains a broken relationship with a father and how he married the most annoying woman in Iowa, Ray Kinsella settles into the present day where he struggles to stay afloat as a corn farmer. One afternoon, Ray is standing in his field (this is apparently something that farmers often do) and hears a voice telling him to build something so that somebody will come. He giggles. He later hallucinates and decides, because of his father's lack of spontaneity, to build a baseball field so that Shoeless Joe Jackson can boss him around on it. Shoeless Joe and his friends start playing on the field regularly, and Ray semi-retires so that he can sit on the bleachers and do absolutely nothing. But more voices lead him to Boston to find Darth Vader and then Minnesota to find J. J. Hunsecker.

Right away, we know why Cory loves this movie. For there, right on the Kinsella television screen, is Jimmy Stewart himself (in Harvey)in the first of two too-obvious references to mental illness. The other is that "I'm Crazy" song playing at a farm supply store.

I'd seen this movie once with my father about twenty years ago. Until I watched it again, I thought it was a pretty good movie that I actually liked. Turns out that it's a big sloppy mess of Hollywood treacle that I really kind of hated. It starts with the music. After some overly dramatic big Hollywood music accompanying pictures of young Ray, we get to the shots of Ray in his cornfield with the creepy ambient music that plays whenever he hears dead people. Here's what I want to know--does Ray also hear the creepy ambient music? After about fifteen minutes, I was already tired of the five-note piano theme that played every time something important happens. Later, I wanted to invent a drinking game or something like a drinking game where I shoved a pencil in my ear every time that music played.

I don't mind stretching my imagination, suspending my disbelief, or whatever. Field of Dreams forces me to stretch things a little too thin. Take for instance the hallucinations that lead him to his epiphany. He keeps asking if he's crazy because the script has him ask it about ten times. The answer has to be "Yes!" doesn't it? Nobody in his right mind is going to build a baseball field in that situation. Then, after he gets the "Ease his pain" message, he just happens to show up to a really awkward book-banning discussion where author Mann's name pops up, and he makes the connection? I loved that book discussion by the way. People randomly yelling out, "Pervert!" or "He's probably a communist!" And it climaxes with the most un-arousing catfight in the history of cinema. It's hard to swallow that a big coinkydink leads him to want to travel to Boston and Mann. But when his obnoxious wife starts in with the "I had a dream you were watching a game at Fenway with Mann" thing? I might have thrown up anyway, but that five-note piano motif came on and made it happen a little quicker.

The acting--I didn't like it, almost top to bottom. Burt Lancaster's the best of the bunch, but there are some moments when he's reading his lines like he's in a hurry, almost like he feels he has to finish them before he dies. Young "Moonlight" is maybe the worst, wide-eyed and talentless. He even overdoes winking. Amy Madigan is just too much, but maybe Ray's wife is supposed to be irritating. It's almost like Madigan read the script, thought it was a comedy, and played everything for laughs. James Earl Jones doesn't really fit inside his pants or his character, and Mann's behavior and dialogue is so inconsistent. There's an obnoxious child actor, Gaby Hoffmann; the only thing she accomplished was making me wish Ray and his wife were childless. At one point, Ray's brother-in-law (right before he shoves her off the top of the bleachers and nearly kills her) asks, "What the hell is she talking about?" and that was exactly what I was thinking. I wanted to give Timothy Busfield (Ed's brother on the TV show Ed) a high five. And there's Ray Liotta who seems bored with his role as Shoeless Joe. And good ol' Kevin Costner. His idea of "acting" is apparently looking into the distance and nodding or, sometimes, looking really confused. My favorite Costner moment is during a scene where he's driving his VW van and practising how to greet Mann. It's nearly a Nicholas Cage moment.

Some random questions I had:

--Ray is telling his daughter Shoeless Joe's story while building half of a baseball field--clearing it of the corn, smoothing out the dirt, planting the grass seed, putting up the lights, assembling the bleachers, etc. Is he a really really slow storyteller or a quick builder of bleachers?

--When Shoeless Joe arrives, there's all this baseball equipment just sitting there ready to be used. Where did that come from?

--Was Shoeless Joe supposed to be kind of a jerk? I thought he was kind of jerky.

--Why was Ray's wife wearing a beanie at one point?

--Time travel? Seriously?

--Where did the umpires come from?

--Is the line "Who is this? Elvis?" supposed to be as funny as I thought it was?

--How about the line "You guys are guests in my corn"?

--The six minutes after the little girl is shoved from the bleachers--does it turn into a comedy there?

--Wouldn't the "Hey, Dad? Want to have a catch?" line really confuse John?

This is the type of movie that stretches sentimentality so far that it snaps and hits you right in the brain. Or the groin. Hard. It's just too, too much. And most unfortunately, Ray and his wife are trying to figure out how the baseball field can be a financial enterprise at the end of the movie. That was a sickening thematic twist there, wasn't it?

I'll end with something positive because I don't want to be all negative with the first movie club selection. There's a scene where James Earl Jones walks into the cornfield. Before he enters, he stands there with a dumb grin on his face, sticks his hand in and out a few times, laughs really awkwardly, wobbles a bit. I had to rewind and watch that several times. Take it out of the context of Field of Dreams, and it's absolutely hilarious.