Uplifting sports movies have become a genre of their own in recent years. Titles such as The Rookie ($75.6 million), Remember the Titans ($115.6 million), The Miracle ($64.4 million), Coach Carter ($67.3 million), Glory Road ($42.6 million) and We Are Marshall ($43.5 million) have all demonstrated how much mainstream movie-goings relish the experience of sharing in historically accurate moments of competitive glory.
The latest such project takes a cue from Bad News Bears, focusing on Little League heroics. The Perfect Game chronicles the events of the 1957 Little League World Series that led to Mexico becoming the first international team to win the championship. The team from Monterrey was led by a priest and a former major league baseball player who led them to overcome obstacles such as financial destitution, fear of deportation and xenophobia from their American hosts. Along the way, the kids racked up an astonishing 13 consecutive wins including the titular perfect game in the championship. To this day, it remains the only perfect game ever pitched at the Little League World Series.
Odds are that if you watch this movie, you will do so mainly for the story, which is phenomenal. The cast is pretty good, though. Cheech Marin, whose last sports movie, Tin Cup, was also a classic, will join a pair of juniors, Clifton Collins Jr. (Capote) and Louis Gossett Jr. (An Officer and a Gentleman). Emilie de Ravin aka Claire from Lost provides the estrogen on the project. One other notable is Jansen Panettiere, whose name probably looks familiar to fans of NBC’s Heroes. Yes, he is the younger brother of Hayden Panettiere, everyone’s favorite invincible cheerleader. (David Mumpower/BOP)
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