Dir: Penny Marshall | US Sports Drama, 123′
The re-release of Penny Marshall’s classic female-centric sports drama comes at a time when women’s team games were never more popular, or more successful. Baseball, football, basketball, ice hockey, even curling: you name it and women are out there competing with each other in a way that seems entirely normal yet was often viewed with scepticism.
A League of Their Own was made in 1992 but it portrays an era when baseball was strictly for the men. Tom Hanks embodies the crass and often thoroughly disgusting behaviour that males could get away with back in the day when vile habits were permissible; he plays the spitting, foul-mouthed Jimmy Duggan in this enjoyable trip down memory lane that sees young American ladies taking over baseball during wartime in the early 1940s when the men had taken off their baseball kits to don army uniforms to join the war effort. He joins a starry cast along with Madonna, who certainly has the chops.
But the star turn is Geena Davis whose cheerful smile and rangy physique makes her perfect in the role of Dotty Hinson an Oregon farmer’s wife who captured the imagination a baseball scout (Jon Lovitz) who signs her, along with her younger sister (Lori Petty) to form a professional baseball team called the Peaches. The idea was to carry on the sporting fun with an All American Girls Professional Baseball League of the Midwest.
Initially baulking at wearing shortish skirts to charm male fans, they eventually fell in with the plan, cajoled by a Chocolate manufacturer who is putting up the finance (Garry Marshall plays Walter Harvey, David Strathairn his sidekick). Scripted by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, the story centres around petty and sibling rivalry, showcasing wartime views about women, and men, that seem extremely dated nowadays. The schmaltzy reunion ending is beyond the pale, and should be edited out. Apart from that the film is well-paced and professionally crafted with its action-packed set pieces, dramatic tension built around the final competition between the two teams: The Peaches and another team from Racine, where Petty ends up playing, providing a counterpoint to the girls’ rivalry. Hans Zimmer’s big-band score is a rousing compliment to the action. MT
RELEASES NATIONWIDE TO MARK INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY | MARCH 2020