unremarkable

“Angels in the Outfield” is just about everything you would think a faith-based film from Disney would be. It’s wholesome, silly, cliche, and wears its heart on its sleeve. It’s a regular sports movie, just with the help of actual angels. And while that sounds clever and pleasant, the film kinda comes up short, fudging on fun and stakes.


The opening is kind of a cloying downer. Roger (Joseph Gordon Levitt) just lost his mother and his deadbeat dad (Dermot Mulroney) is ditching the kid in foster care to go ride motorcycles. When asked what it will take to be a family again, the dad cynically responds “when the Angels win the pennant.” Roger believes this and prays for heavenly intervention.


And the Angels need it? They suck bad. They’re bumbling stooges who run into each other making plays, can’t hit, catch, or field, and later come up with little raps in the locker room about how they suck. These charisma challenged morons push the limits on underdog rootableness. Even their manager (Danny Glover) seems to despise them and he’s the easiest person on the team to identify with.


But while Roger and his little buddy J.P. (Milton Davis Jr.) are at the park one day, the Angels suddenly start making sensational plays and only Roger knows why. Only he can see the real angels swooping onto the field to help the players. Glover is incredulous to this at first but upon further review, he decides to test Roger’s angel theory more.


There are rules to this, laid out by Al (Christopher Lloyd), the leader of the angels. Only Roger can see them, no one else can know they’re around. But they continue to be nothing more than a plot device: we never meet any of them, in appearance they're very bland and cheap looking, and Lloyd is particularly wasted in an expository role.


And that brings me to the movie’s biggest problem, which is that we’re not watching a movie about a team coming together or developing, but rather angels helping them to cheat by manipulating the action.


The angels can slow down the game to almost T-ball like levels or they can make the ball bounce around so the other team is flailing around trying to capture it. It’s childish action fine for kids but for anyone older, it’s not at all inspiring. Where’s the drama in a team not improving on its own? Where the wins are a foregone conclusion as long as the angels are there? And since the dad is such a deadbeat and we know Roger will never get what he needs from him, I also wondered what this all was in the service of?


There are a few nice performances in this movie. Glover, as a contemptible man who softens over all the kids and the miracles is heartwarming. So is Brenda Fricker as foster mother, and Tony Danza as that one guy on the team with a bum arm looking for one more shot at redemption. Levitt does fine work too in a very early role.


In the end the movie is cute, slapsticky, and preaches about faith as the violins soar and everyone flaps their arms like wings. But the baseball action and what exactly we’re meant to root for here really needed some rewrites- even an explanation about how Championships work in the angel community comes off like flimsy, silly formula.