For Love of the Game 1999

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: This is no perfect -- or even half-perfect -- game. It's another movie where conventions are subbed for life lessons, where the emotions are cued by golden oldies and where the motivation (at least on the studio's part) isn't love of the game but money. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Those who have even a small soft spot for baseball's soothing rhythms will be hard-pressed to resist it. Read more

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: I'm all for romance, you understand. But what makes this a drawback is that these people are all wrong for each other and that the filmmakers don't seem to know it. Read more

Desmond Ryan, Philadelphia Inquirer: On the field, Costner is consistent, but his exploration of Billy's romantic dilemma is superficial and often wooden. Read more

Lawrence Van Gelder, New York Times: Filmmaking, like baseball, is a team game, and sometimes even a talented lineup produces unexceptional results. Read more

Rod Dreher, New York Post: For love of the God, what is wrong with the once-likable Kevin Costner? Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Under the confident direction of Sam Raimi, Mr. Costner gives a restrained but emotionally accessible performance. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: This guy is earnest, tireless, noble in his devotion to America's pastime and mostly dull as branch water. Read more

Bob Longino, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: At two hours-plus, it doesn't just seem long, it sometimes feels like a double rain delay. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: For Love Of The Game seems lost, as one overlong melodramatic interlude follows another, each more predictable than the entirely predictable game itself. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: For the first 100 minutes or so I found this hokey but serviceable; after that my watch became more meaningful than anything I could locate on-screen. Read more

Jeff Millar, Houston Chronicle: For Love of the Game is an entertaining double play: an excellent baseball movie and an even better love story. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Depressingly, for a plot propelled by a love story, For Love of the Game sure strikes out when it comes to Billy and Jane's romance. Read more

Michael Sragow, New Yorker: For Love of the Game asks whether the same qualities that make an athlete a champion don't also destroy his happiness. The answer, unfortunately, is long-winded and redundant... But some of the baseball scenes are good. Read more

Peter Rainer, New York Magazine/Vulture: The film comes across like the un-Bull Durham: Every woozy cliche that Shelton and Costner refrained from has been given pride of place here. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: The baseball sequences are fabulous, not least because Costner looks and moves like a real player a rarity for actors in sports movies... But the love story, a five-year off-and-on affair, is little more than a sop to Costner's romantic faithful. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The director especially deserves credit for the verisimilitude of the baseball sequences. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Thinking back through the movie, I cannot recall a single thing either character said that was worth hearing in its own right, apart from the requirements of the plot. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Not a frame reflects the distinctively edgy touch that director Sam Raimi brought to films as diverse as The Evil Dead and A Simple Plan. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: OK, Sam, maybe you believed you had to sell your soul to Hollywood. But did you have to sell it this cheap? Read more

Bob Graham, San Francisco Chronicle: It is a romance about a man and a woman, and it is a romance about baseball itself. Read more

David Edelstein, Slate: The rhythms of the game feel right; the rhythms of the romance feel embarrassingly Harlequin, and the picture drags on for over two hours. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The movie isn't the equivalent of a perfect game, but it's a winner nonetheless. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: A perfect game in Yankee Stadium is no big deal these days; two have been pitched in the past 16 months. But a good baseball movie, that's hard. Read more

Wendy Ide, Time Out: [The] game stretches over most of the film, but any anticipated suspense is undercut by the sepia-tinted inserts charting the couple's bumpy uninvolving five-year romance from first meeting to acrimonious split(s) Read more

Robert Koehler, Variety: Costner is as uneven as the storytelling itself, stone cold at moments, shimmeringly real in others. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: For Love of the Gameis designed to put a baseball-sized lump in your throat. Well before that, however, you may feel like putting a lump on Kevin Costner's head. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Those flashbacks will drive you nuts. As if baseball didn't drag on long enough, almost every inning or out of that Yankees game is punctuated by a memory. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: Here are two things that definitely don't go together: baseball and piano music. Read more