The Rookie on DVD

This is a warm story of a frustrated man who finally gets his shot at the brass ring - and grabs it successfully.

Dennis Quaid is Jim Morris who, at the beginning of the film, is a frustrated young man. He’s angry that his military father keeps moving him around the country just as he’s learning to settle into a new place. He puts up with some 14 moves in his first 12 years of life, ending up in Big Lake, Texas, a small town where you’d wonder why they’d need a recruiting officer.

Flash forward to “today,” and Jim is grown, married, and a high school teacher and coach. But he can still pitch, and this skill ends up being used as a carrot to help motivate his students’ baseball team: if they win the championship, he’ll try out for a big league team.

Well, you can guess what happens, and Jim finds himself at a recruiting camp for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, where his awesome fastball immediately catches the team’s attention. He gets signed to one of their farm teams and leaves his old life behind for life on the road, making a pittance but having the time of his life.

Then the phone call comes and he finds himself in “the show.”

The Rookie is pretty good, and it certainly means well. The story, according to the supplementary material on the disc, is very close to Morris’ reality as well. But somehow it seems contrived, just too convenient. If it weren’t a true story (as someone notes in the featurette), it just wouldn’t be believable because things always seem to work out just perfectly, and just in the nick of time.

In fact, there were times while watching “The Rookie” when this reviewer would throw a line at the screen in reaction to what had just happened, only to have a character in the film utter exactly the same words.

Quaid is good, and his pitcher’s stare is excellent. He’s also very likeable in the role, and believable as the teacher/coach/husband/father who seizes opportunity when it comes knocking. His relationship with his father is also believable, though very unfortunate - but when dad shows up at the end, well, we had that predicted about fifteen minutes in advance as well.

It’s a good story, but written with so many clichés and the like, that it becomes a bit much at times. And the whizzing sound effect they use for every time Jim throws the ball also gets to be a bit much; we got the point after the first couple of pitches.

Still, it’s a good family film that teaches an important lesson about dreaming and goal setting, and we need more of that.

The supporting cast is also very good, especially Rachel Griffiths as his wife and Angus T. Jones as his eldest son.

The DVD is very good, with an excellent picture (ours was the anamorphic widescreen, 16x9 TV enhanced, version; a Pan&Scan one is also available, but we recommend you get the widescreen one so it won’t be obsolete when you upgrade to a widescreen TV). The audio, Dolby Digital 5.1 is also excellent, with good use of the surround channels.

Extras include a running commentary featuring Dennis Quaid and director John Lee Hancock and the abovementioned featurette on the real Jim Morris. This feature is in some ways better than the movie.

They’ve also thrown in some baseball tips and a few deleted scenes with director’s introduction.

The Rookie, from Buena Vista Home Video
127 min. anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1), 16x9 TV, Dolby Digital 5.1
Starring Dennis Quaid, Rachel Griffiths, Jay Hernandez and Brian Cox
Produced by Gordon Gray and Mark Ciardi, Mark Johnson
Written by Mike Rich, Directed by John Lee Hancock

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