Amazon.co.uk Review
Penny Marshall's popular 1992 comedy sheds light on a little-known chapter of American sports history with its story of a struggling team in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The league was formed when the recruiting of soldiers during World War II resulted in a shortage of men's baseball teams. The AAGPBL continued after the war (until 1954), and Marshall's movie depicts the league in full swing, beginning when a savvy baseball scout (Jon Lovitz) finds a pair of promising new players in small-town Oregon sisters (Geena Davis, Lori Petty). The sisters are signed to play for the Rockford Peaches near Chicago, whose new manager (Tom Hanks) is a former home-run king who wrecked his career with alcoholism. They're all a bunch of underdogs, and Marshall (with a witty script by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel) does a fine job of establishing a colorful team of supporting players including Madonna and (in her movie debut) Rosie O'Donnell. It's a conventional Hollywood sports story (Marshall's never been one to take dramatic risks) but the stellar cast is delightful and the movie's filled with memorable moments, witty dialogue and agreeable sentiment. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
Customer Reviews:
League of Their Own.......2005-09-06
Like so many films that have a sporting theme, "A League of their own" does follow a fairly predictable storyline. It has all the elements we've seen in so many films that have both gone before it and come after it; a team of nobodies, a rare old mixture of misfits and different personality types. There's the brass loud mouth, the sexy tart (with a heart of course), the plain shy one and so on and so on. The composition of the film is also pretty unsurprising with long montages of thrilling sports snippets and buddy-buddy hug scenes in the dressing room. Obviously the main difference this time is that the team involved is a female baseball team.
It's the Second World War and in fear that the draft of star Major League Baseball players into the armed forces will cause the league to be closed down, the main team owners decide to create an all female league to keep things going whilst the men are away. Scouts are sent around the country and one comes to a little farming community where he meets and signs up catcher Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis) and her kid sister Kit Keller. The girls are formed into the Rockford Peaches and the soon start making the headlines, not only for their sporting prowess.
To only consider the film on its sporting merits though is to really miss the point. What it does throw up is an extremely important period for women when for basically the first time every the "fairer sex" was called up to serve their countries. Women poured into the factories and the workplace to keep the war machine rolling on and I think that the ladies realised what life and opportunities were now open to them. Was it any surprise that when the men came marching home the ladies resisted being packed away back into the kitchen.
The performances are great, Geena Davis is lovely as the "league's best player" and I'd never really realised what a beauty she is. Tom Hanks as the team's alcoholic coach is a bit of a change from his normal good guy he plays, here he's tobacco spitting and generally mean to his girls. There is some good atmosphere generated between Davis and Hanks and you are left to wonder "what if" it was Dottie's husband who didn't come back from the war. Lori Petty as Dottie's sister also puts in a fine performance and although he character is jealous and unfair you never loose sympathy with her and you do enjoy her final victory at the end. Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell as other team-mates put in great entertaining parts and also mention for Jon Lovitz as the talent scout who does a perfect line in sharp one-liners.
The ending is cloyingly sentimental and rather over the top, but it does work. My wife was in floods and something seemed to have got in my eye also as it was watering rather badly.
Great fun film and also very suitable for family viewing.
Stylish, warm and fun to watch.......2004-07-21
This movie is about ten times better than it has any right to be considering how sappy director Penny Marshall could have been tempted to make it, and how phony is the actual baseball played by the young women. (More on this below.)
What makes it work are fine performances by Geena Davis as catcher Dottie Hinson, "the best player in the league," and Lori Petty as her younger sister, Kit Keller. Geena Davis absolutely looks the part with her cool confidence and stately figure while Lori Petty is scrappy and believable as the little sister whose puck and determination set the stage for a sister-rivalry climax at the end.
Jon Lovitz as Ernie Capadino, the baseball talent scout, is a crackup as he delivers just about all the best one liners. (Example: he's watching Dottie and Kit milk the cows and asks, "Doesn't that hurt them?" Geena shrugs for the city slicker, "They don't seem to mind." Ernie thinks about it and then says, "Well, it would bruise the heck out of me," which was doubly funny since he has his anatomy confused.) But the guy who really holds the whole thing together is Tom Hanks as one-time home run king Jimmy Dugan, who is now the Rockford Peaches' alcoholic manager. I have seen Tom Hanks in a number of films, but I don't think he was ever any better than he is here. His transformation from a crude, uncaring drunk to the team's hard-nosed but soft-hearted leader is very well and believably done. And Hanks was never more charming and seldom funnier.
Just as good as the work of the fine cast is Marshall's clear, old-fashioned direction. In many ways this film is a throwback to an earlier time when films set out to warm the hearts of the audience and uplift their spirits. Sure, there is evil in the world and you can't win them all, but you can try, is what this film makes us feel, and if you do, something good will happen. There is of course a somewhat self-conscious retrospective look at the sorry political and social state of women sixty years ago, but Marshall does not wallow in the politics. Instead she emphasizes a fun-to-watch tale with real human characters. The unpredictable, but believable ending was very agreeable.
Okay now to some of the problems with the "baseball." Notice that we first see Kit as a softball pitcher. How she made the transition from throwing underhanded to being one of the best overhand hardball throwers in the league in just a few months is...well, doubtful. And the outfits they wore! Ever try to slide into second trying to break up the double play without sliding pads or even jersey pants? I don't think so. The girls were bare-legged. To Marshall's credit she does show one girl with a huge strawberry bruise on her thigh. Furthermore for those viewers who have actually played baseball, the way many of the young women threw and caught the ball was again, shall we say, doubtful. Marshall employed as extras some young ladies who could actually play a little and we see some shots of their style and grace, but the only star who could even pretend to play at that level would be Rosie O'Donnell. Madonna has some athletic ability, but to imagine her patrolling center field and hauling down long drives strains credibility.
Okay, so what? If we put Tom Hanks at bat against even the most mediocre of Class A pitchers, it would be obvious that he is no home run king. In fact, I think Penny Marshall did a great job of creating and maintaining the illusion of Big League skills for the players so that we were not distracted from the story itself. Skillful editing helped.
By the way, if they gave Academy Awards for a performance in a role short of a supporting role but longer than a cameo (and maybe they should), Megan Cavanagh would have won it for her touching impersonation of Marla Hooch, a painfully shy and vulnerable, less than pretty girl from the farm who finds herself as a baseball player in the city as she steals some guy's heart with an unselfconscious, boozy, off-key torch song. I also loved the scene where she is rocketing line drives off the walls and through the windows of the high school gymnasium.
Note the appearance of David L. Lander as the radio play-by-play guy. He's best known as the wacky/creepy "Squiggy" Squiggman from the old Laverne and Shirley TV sit-com. Here he plays it mostly straight but does get to wear his hat with the bill up as Leo Gorcey did in the East Side Kids (AKA The Bowery Boys) movies from the early forties.
Bottom line here: Uplifting, fun, and even worth seeing again.
A Great Movie.......2002-04-19
Since its release I have watched this film many times - at the cinema, on video, on TV and now on DVD - and every time it makes me tense and excited during the baseball games and tearful during the emotional parts. Geena, Tom, Rosie and Lori are great but for me it's Madonna's amazing performance in the dug out when she's told the league may close and she'll have to return to her poor, disadvantaged roots that steals the show! I always have to dry my eyes at that part! I could not recommend this movie enough!
Grate cast ... formula movie........2001-09-14
Yes everybody did a good job in this movie. However there was nothing exceptional about it. If the cast had been of any less caliber, this would be a forgettable movie. Both Tom Hanks and Geena Davis have made better movies. The only reason I gave this movie three stars is because it can stand on its own and should not be compared to these better movies.
An amazing film, has you hooked all the way through.............2001-04-09
Easily my favourite film of all time, something that everyone can enjoy, if not for the film itself, the sport, the genre, there's something for anyone! With a cast of acclaimed actors and actresses, it offers more than the average film and induces you into its tale of happiness, losses and fortune.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Penny Marshall's popular 1992 comedy sheds light on a little-known chapter of American sports history with its story of a struggling team in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The league was formed when the recruiting of soldiers during World War II resulted in a shortage of men's baseball teams. The AAGPBL continued after the war (until 1954), and Marshall's movie depicts the league in full swing, beginning when a savvy baseball scout (Jon Lovitz) finds a pair of promising new players in small-town Oregon sisters (Geena Davis, Lori Petty). The sisters are signed to play for the Rockford Peaches near Chicago, whose new manager (Tom Hanks) is a former home-run king who wrecked his career with alcoholism. They're all a bunch of underdogs, and Marshall (with a witty script by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel) does a fine job of establishing a colorful team of supporting players including Madonna and (in her movie debut) Rosie O'Donnell. It's a conventional Hollywood sports story (Marshall's never been one to take dramatic risks) but the stellar cast is delightful and the movie's filled with memorable moments, witty dialogue and agreeable sentiment. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
Customer Reviews:
League of Their Own.......2005-09-06
Like so many films that have a sporting theme, "A League of their own" does follow a fairly predictable storyline. It has all the elements we've seen in so many films that have both gone before it and come after it; a team of nobodies, a rare old mixture of misfits and different personality types. There's the brass loud mouth, the sexy tart (with a heart of course), the plain shy one and so on and so on. The composition of the film is also pretty unsurprising with long montages of thrilling sports snippets and buddy-buddy hug scenes in the dressing room. Obviously the main difference this time is that the team involved is a female baseball team.
It's the Second World War and in fear that the draft of star Major League Baseball players into the armed forces will cause the league to be closed down, the main team owners decide to create an all female league to keep things going whilst the men are away. Scouts are sent around the country and one comes to a little farming community where he meets and signs up catcher Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis) and her kid sister Kit Keller. The girls are formed into the Rockford Peaches and the soon start making the headlines, not only for their sporting prowess.
To only consider the film on its sporting merits though is to really miss the point. What it does throw up is an extremely important period for women when for basically the first time every the "fairer sex" was called up to serve their countries. Women poured into the factories and the workplace to keep the war machine rolling on and I think that the ladies realised what life and opportunities were now open to them. Was it any surprise that when the men came marching home the ladies resisted being packed away back into the kitchen.
The performances are great, Geena Davis is lovely as the "league's best player" and I'd never really realised what a beauty she is. Tom Hanks as the team's alcoholic coach is a bit of a change from his normal good guy he plays, here he's tobacco spitting and generally mean to his girls. There is some good atmosphere generated between Davis and Hanks and you are left to wonder "what if" it was Dottie's husband who didn't come back from the war. Lori Petty as Dottie's sister also puts in a fine performance and although he character is jealous and unfair you never loose sympathy with her and you do enjoy her final victory at the end. Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell as other team-mates put in great entertaining parts and also mention for Jon Lovitz as the talent scout who does a perfect line in sharp one-liners.
The ending is cloyingly sentimental and rather over the top, but it does work. My wife was in floods and something seemed to have got in my eye also as it was watering rather badly.
Great fun film and also very suitable for family viewing.
Stylish, warm and fun to watch.......2004-07-21
This movie is about ten times better than it has any right to be considering how sappy director Penny Marshall could have been tempted to make it, and how phony is the actual baseball played by the young women. (More on this below.)
What makes it work are fine performances by Geena Davis as catcher Dottie Hinson, "the best player in the league," and Lori Petty as her younger sister, Kit Keller. Geena Davis absolutely looks the part with her cool confidence and stately figure while Lori Petty is scrappy and believable as the little sister whose puck and determination set the stage for a sister-rivalry climax at the end.
Jon Lovitz as Ernie Capadino, the baseball talent scout, is a crackup as he delivers just about all the best one liners. (Example: he's watching Dottie and Kit milk the cows and asks, "Doesn't that hurt them?" Geena shrugs for the city slicker, "They don't seem to mind." Ernie thinks about it and then says, "Well, it would bruise the heck out of me," which was doubly funny since he has his anatomy confused.) But the guy who really holds the whole thing together is Tom Hanks as one-time home run king Jimmy Dugan, who is now the Rockford Peaches' alcoholic manager. I have seen Tom Hanks in a number of films, but I don't think he was ever any better than he is here. His transformation from a crude, uncaring drunk to the team's hard-nosed but soft-hearted leader is very well and believably done. And Hanks was never more charming and seldom funnier.
Just as good as the work of the fine cast is Marshall's clear, old-fashioned direction. In many ways this film is a throwback to an earlier time when films set out to warm the hearts of the audience and uplift their spirits. Sure, there is evil in the world and you can't win them all, but you can try, is what this film makes us feel, and if you do, something good will happen. There is of course a somewhat self-conscious retrospective look at the sorry political and social state of women sixty years ago, but Marshall does not wallow in the politics. Instead she emphasizes a fun-to-watch tale with real human characters. The unpredictable, but believable ending was very agreeable.
Okay now to some of the problems with the "baseball." Notice that we first see Kit as a softball pitcher. How she made the transition from throwing underhanded to being one of the best overhand hardball throwers in the league in just a few months is...well, doubtful. And the outfits they wore! Ever try to slide into second trying to break up the double play without sliding pads or even jersey pants? I don't think so. The girls were bare-legged. To Marshall's credit she does show one girl with a huge strawberry bruise on her thigh. Furthermore for those viewers who have actually played baseball, the way many of the young women threw and caught the ball was again, shall we say, doubtful. Marshall employed as extras some young ladies who could actually play a little and we see some shots of their style and grace, but the only star who could even pretend to play at that level would be Rosie O'Donnell. Madonna has some athletic ability, but to imagine her patrolling center field and hauling down long drives strains credibility.
Okay, so what? If we put Tom Hanks at bat against even the most mediocre of Class A pitchers, it would be obvious that he is no home run king. In fact, I think Penny Marshall did a great job of creating and maintaining the illusion of Big League skills for the players so that we were not distracted from the story itself. Skillful editing helped.
By the way, if they gave Academy Awards for a performance in a role short of a supporting role but longer than a cameo (and maybe they should), Megan Cavanagh would have won it for her touching impersonation of Marla Hooch, a painfully shy and vulnerable, less than pretty girl from the farm who finds herself as a baseball player in the city as she steals some guy's heart with an unselfconscious, boozy, off-key torch song. I also loved the scene where she is rocketing line drives off the walls and through the windows of the high school gymnasium.
Note the appearance of David L. Lander as the radio play-by-play guy. He's best known as the wacky/creepy "Squiggy" Squiggman from the old Laverne and Shirley TV sit-com. Here he plays it mostly straight but does get to wear his hat with the bill up as Leo Gorcey did in the East Side Kids (AKA The Bowery Boys) movies from the early forties.
Bottom line here: Uplifting, fun, and even worth seeing again.
A Great Movie.......2002-04-19
Since its release I have watched this film many times - at the cinema, on video, on TV and now on DVD - and every time it makes me tense and excited during the baseball games and tearful during the emotional parts. Geena, Tom, Rosie and Lori are great but for me it's Madonna's amazing performance in the dug out when she's told the league may close and she'll have to return to her poor, disadvantaged roots that steals the show! I always have to dry my eyes at that part! I could not recommend this movie enough!
Grate cast ... formula movie........2001-09-14
Yes everybody did a good job in this movie. However there was nothing exceptional about it. If the cast had been of any less caliber, this would be a forgettable movie. Both Tom Hanks and Geena Davis have made better movies. The only reason I gave this movie three stars is because it can stand on its own and should not be compared to these better movies.
An amazing film, has you hooked all the way through.............2001-04-09
Easily my favourite film of all time, something that everyone can enjoy, if not for the film itself, the sport, the genre, there's something for anyone! With a cast of acclaimed actors and actresses, it offers more than the average film and induces you into its tale of happiness, losses and fortune.
DVD Review:
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