Customer Reviews

The Winning Season

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I HAVE SEEN THIS MOVIE SEVERAL TIMES. I OWN AND OPERATE A SPORTSCARD SHOP IN SO. CALIFORNIA AND THIS IS SO GREAT I HAD PURCHASED MORE THEN ONE COPY. FOR THE PAST YEAR I HAD BEEN LOANING OUT THE DVD TO CUSTOMERS FOR FREE THAT CAME INTO MY STORE AS A FAMILY, AND AT LEAST 10 FAMILIES HAVE SEEN IT AND RETURNED IT, UNTIL THE LAST TIME CUSTOMER EITHER FORGOT TO RETURN IT OR LOVED IT SO MUCH THEY KEPT IT. SO NOW I AM ABOUT TO BUY 5 MORE COPIES TO HAVE IN STORE FOR LOANERS. I HAVE BEEN IN BUSINESS FOR 43 PLUS YEARS AND JUST LOVE TO SPREAD MY JOY FOR THE SPORT OF KINDNESS IN MY COMMUNITY

for a movie I've never heard of before this was very entertaining. A story with both a beginning and an ending. The middle was pretty good also!

THIS WAS A PRETTY GOOD FILM. THIS BASEBALL FILM IS BASED ON THE BOOK "HONUS & ME." IF YOU LIKED THE SHORT STORY, YOU WILL LIKE THIS FILM. SET IN 1985. A NINE YEAR OLD BOY STARTS CLEANING AN OLD LADY'S GARAGE AND STUMBLES UPON A 1909 T-206 HONUS WAGNER BASEBALL CARD. IT MAGICALLY SENDS HIM BACK TO 1909 TO MEET THE GREAT PLAYER. HE DOES AND THEN HE HAS TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET HOME.

Just watched this for the first time a couple days ago. Based on the cover art and the first several minutes of the movie, I thought this was some obscure movie made in the 80s. Turns out this was made in 2004! I can't believe a sports movie like this would disappear so quickly after release. In any case, I am glad I stumbled across this cute little baseball film.

I know some folks who stay away from "cheesy sports flicks." I am not one of them, and I enjoyed this--in spite of the fact that it is very cheesy. The premise is that a young boy gets transported back to the 1909 World Series with a magic baseball card. There's a lot of nostalgia and quaintness, and the story is very pleasant.

To tell you the truth, the part that bothered me the most about the whole film was when the baseball card shop owner was inspecting the card (with white gloves and a magnifying glass) and he proclaimed it "gem mint!" Even without a magnifying glass one could see rounded corners on the card, and then the kid promptly stuck it in his pocket and carried it around everywhere! Oh well, that's a truly minor quibble with an otherwise fun story!

If you like baseball films, stories that involve time travel, or clean family entertainment, you should try this!

The Winning Season is a good movie loosely based on Honus and Me. I wish it had more of the farfetched fantasy that makes Dan Gutman's book appeal to children, however, it was done in very good taste.

Although this film is not as famous as other baseball movies such as Field of Dreams, 61*, Fever Pitch,......etc, it is one of my favorite baseball movies after I watched it.

The main scene is back to the 1909 World Series with two HOFers, Honus Wagner and Ty Cobb. You can see something about baseball cards, the notorious Ty Cobb's behaviors and the romance of Honus Wagner.

The story is lovely and charming while the pace is soft and gentle. Although the cast is not so well-known, they got the job done pretty well. Try to grab a DVD and watch it. You will find it worth the time and money.

"The Winning Season" is well intentioned. It undertakes to tell us how an 11-year-old boy named Joe Soshack who "chokes" in the clutch in little league games finds baseball's Holy Grail and goes back in time to the year 1909, meeting National League great Honus Wagner and affecting the outcome of that year's World Series. Wagner and his girlfriend Mandy (Matthew Modine and Kristin Davis) forego their planned marriage in the process -- then there is a surprise twist at the end that brightens up a somewhat lackluster picture.
But -- somehow this feel-good movie can't make up its mind whether it wants to be "Field of Dreams," or "Eight Men Out," or "Hoosiers," or "The Wizard of Oz," or perhaps even "Damn Yankees" (Joe Soshack, meet Joe Hardy). Aren't many subtleties in its characterizations, either. It depicts Ty Cobb, the greatest ballplayer of all time and a bitter rival of Wagner's in the World Series, as a nasty, scheming, dirty player -- which he may have been, but he was still the greatest. Of course, Hollywood has had heartburn over Cobb ever since writings of recent years revealed that he Did Not Like Black People, the cardinal, unforgivable sin nowadays. This comes out in the unnuanced, all-bad portrayal of him by William Lee Scott.
Shawn Hotasy as the adult Joe Soshack -- the one in young Joe's dream -- comes across as bumbling and kind of silly. Mark Rendall as 11-year-old Joe does probably the best acting job in the picture. Modine and Davis are merely the generic good-looking young couple as Honus and Mandy.
All in all, it's a fairly entertaining way to spend an hour and a half. But it won't make the all-time top 10 of sports movies.