The Natural takes all the mythologies and superstitions that have attached themselves to baseball and bundles them into one infectiously silly package. For this story, the game takes on an unknowable magic. Its heroes have supernatural talent; villains lurk and scowl in the shadows. This means your enjoyment of this film will entirely hinge on how much you buy into its straight-faced goofiness. Stretch your disbelief to the point of snapping, and you’ll find The Natural to be flyweight entertainment. Think about any of it for more than a split second, and the story becomes an overlong, overblown cartoon.
Based on a (much darker) novel by Bernard Malamud, the film opens on young Roy Hobbs (Paul Sullivan Jr.). It’s the 1920s, on a Midwestern farm so idyllic it might as well be next to Clark Kent’s. They say prodigies only exist in math, music, and chess, but forget all that: Roy is a baseball prodigy. His fastballs bust through the barn door; his home runs fly for hundreds of yards.
Just like any other paradise, this honey-hued fantasy isn’t meant to last. Roy’s dad is a good man who instills down-home morals into Roy. In the movies, being a good, grounded father is bad for your mortality. Sure enough, a few scenes go by before Mr. Hobbs is clutching his chest and crumpling to the ground. Despite all his talent, young Roy is now a rudderless orphan boy. Thankfully, the gods supply him with a consolation prize: Lightning splits the family oak tree, allowing Roy to forge his own version of Excalibur–a pristine bat, known as Wonderboy.
Without his father’s guidance, Roy’s path to glory takes many detours. He falls under the spell of Harriet (Barbara Hershey), a seductress draped in funeral black. She’s an early example of a celebrity stalker, and a perfect psychopath. Harriet gravely injures Roy, and sends his life spiraling into the abyss.
Cut to sixteen years later. Now middle-aged, Roy strolls into a dugout, looking for one more shot. The fictional New York Knights are the joke of the Major Leagues. Manager Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley) hollers at his inept players, and they oblige him by playing even worse. He treats Roy with disdain: After all, this weather-beaten man only makes the team feel more like the Island of Misfit Toys.
The only problem with Pop’s contempt? Well, Roy’s still got the goods. In batting practice, he sends balls deep into the rafters. His fastball splits the netting at the backstop. Once Roy gets into a game, he becomes an instant god. The Knights start climbing out of the cellar, much to the chagrin of the team’s eccentric owner (Robert Prosky). (Baseball movies seem to always feature a fiendish owner who wants the team to tank, so they can fire sale everything and get rich from the ashes.)
As always, the wrong people seem to haunt Roy. Max Mercy (Robert Duvall) is a self-serving reporter who makes it his mission to dredge up Roy’s dark side. Memo (Kim Basinger) becomes his love interest, but she has angles of her own. And then there’s Gus (Darren McGavin), a one-eyed bookie who either wants to buy Roy or bankrupt him.
That’s a lot of characters for a baseball movie, but we aren’t done yet: Iris (Glenn Close) was Roy’s childhood squeeze. Fate has pulled them apart, but his widespread fame might provoke a reunion. For all this film works to mythologize baseball, Roy’s best chance at enduring happiness would seem to be a life outside of it.
I’ve seen The Natural many times, through very different eyes. Eight-year-old me watched in slack-jawed awe as Roy Hobbs knocked the cover off a baseball, and shattered the clock at Wrigley. I was a devout little leaguer, and when this movie presented baseball as something magical, I bought every bit of the hype.
Of course, now I’m older, slightly wiser, and substantially more cynical. Much of this film is overwrought hooey, and it’s remarkable the filmmakers could deliver it with a straight face. Indeed, when lightning streaks the sky and a stadium crowd grows whisper quiet at the sight of a broken bat, the effect is so slathered in hokiness as to be downright funny.
Still, The Natural offers a lot to enjoy. Director Barry Levinson and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel deliver a gorgeous, golden film. When beautiful, blonde Roy plays catch in the dance of amber wheat, while Randy Newman’s trumpets blow a stirring fanfare, it’s all so stirringly American, it makes Norman Rockwell look like Leon Trotsky. All the players seem to be having a good time, especially Brimley as the grouchy gramps who lives in a state of perpetual disgust. (Further kudos go to the late, great Richard Farnsworth, who plays Brimley’s level-headed work spouse.)
For all its faults, I still get a kick out of The Natural. Some of that is pure, unapologetic nostalgia. (After all, I was once a boy who spent his entire allowance on baseball cards.) For everyone who’s never seen it through those eyes, I’m not sure how it will play. Maybe it will seem like a calculated product that works too hard to convince you of its innocence. Maybe it will feel too cornball for its own good. (That closing scene was hilariously spoofed on David Letterman.) Let me put it this way: If you can vibe into The Natural‘s artificially sweetened sense of wonder, you might have a pretty good time with it. Otherwise, head for the dugout.
138 min. PG. MGM+.
