THE KID FROM LEFT FIELD
Tagline: The Grand Picture About the Grandest Game of All -- You'll Love Every Wonderful Minute of It!
Pizza: Papa John's
Preshow Entertainment: Commercials from the 1950s and 1960s, featuring celebrities like Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore.
"I HAD A BALL WATCHING"...NO, WAIT..."RUN, DON'T BALK TO SEE"...OH CRAP...ERRR..."I'M BATTY FOR"...OH FOR CRISSAKES, JUST SEE THE KID FROM LEFT FIELD
PRESHOW ENTERTAINMENT:
Between being yappy and running late, we didn't watch the preshow this time. We'll just bump it to another month.
AND NOW, OUR FEATURE PRESENTATION:
I'm not a sports guy. I don't like going to games and I don't like watching them on TV. Sure, they often have blimps and cheerleaders, but even that's not enough to get me to have the slightest interest in rooting for the home team. Or any team for that matter. If it was possible for both teams to lose the same game I'd be okay with that. But throw sports into a movie about an underdog or ragtag team and with little exception (like MYSTERY, ALASKA for certain), I am there.
1953's Capra-like THE KID FROM LEFT FIELD is a sweet confection that will have you smiling from beginning to end. We enjoyed this movie so much that halfway through, I went to the kitchen and came back with a bag of peanuts we had laying around. They weren't fresh roasted, but it was the right thing to do.
Like their mammal counterpart, The Bison's baseball team is dying. Stadium attendance has dropped to 123. The team owner, Fred Whacker (Ray Collins, playing it a little too Gale Gordon-y) is at wit's end.
Enter nine year old Christie Cooper (Billy Chapin), the son of Larry Cooper (Dan Dailey), an ex, almost famous ballplayer (there's a picture of him with Babe Ruth on his wall). Christie doesn't know it yet, but he's about to change everything.
His dad could have been big but his temper got him tossed out of the minors. Now in the demeaning job of selling peanuts at the stadium (where he also works for "peanuts"), Larry is a broken man living in a transient hotel with his kid. But he's not Nic Cage broken, meaning he's not histrionic and letting booze pour down his face when he drinks from the bottle as he makes bug faces. Sure, Larry still has that temper, and yeah it gets him fired, and yeah he does drink his sorrows away that night, but many people would. Larry's a good man deep down, with a smart and loving son. He can't go full tilt. He has to raise Christie alone (only a brief mention of mom slips by, where it's implied he's a widower).
So enamored of his dad is Christie that he's not only memorized all the stats of past and present players, but also all the tips dad has to make the Bisons work better.
I think you can see where this is going. Of course, we can't get there without some conflicts along the way, like a truant officer, pneumonia, and a bitter and jealous coach giving Christie one of the meanest speeches this side of "I just killed your dog." And to further gum it up, another subplot involves over the hill (at 37) player Pete (Lloyd Bridges), who must choose between baseball or a job at a sporting goods store. If he doesn't take the job, his girl Marian (the wonderful Anne Bancroft in one of her first movie roles) will leave him.
KID may appear to be the story of a kid who learns from his dad, but it's actually more about a dad who is saved by his kid. Though a bit routine, this movie is made with pounds of heart. It's just one smiley moment after the other. The script is a pleasure, without a wasted moment (it helps that the movie is 80 minutes). But it's young 'un Billy Chapin (a distant relative of the great Harry Chapin, and who two years later would play John Harper in the fabulous NIGHT OF THE HUNTER) that sells this movie for me. Christie's gee-whiz/Beaver honesty and innocence are not only refreshing (and often funny) to the team but to us as well. He looks like a puppy waiting for a Liv-A-Snap. We had a kid steal a movie before. Back in July of 2005, Peggy Anne Garner killed me with her performance when we screened A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN.
Unfortunately, KID is currently unavailable on DVD. I think I got it off the Fox Movie Channel, so you can look for it there, perhaps. It's unbelievable that no one came along to remake this film. But it's okay, they'd most likely ruin it anyway. Oops, someone did. A 1979 TV movie starring Gary Coleman, Robert Guillaume and Ed McMahon ("Whatchoo talking about, McMahon?").
THE KID FROM LEFT FIELD is one of the best movies I've seen this year. It stole our hearts....and a few bases, too! Damn, I almost made it all the way through without a stupid baseball pun. Oh well. That's one strike against me.
Tags: random movie club, the kid from left field, dan dailey, billy chapin, anne bancroft
