If the Boston Red Sox hadn't finally won the World Series in 2004, I'm pretty sure this movie would never have been made. People would have been afraid they'd get killed for dredging up the spectacular sports tragedy of the 1986 World Series and the ground ball down the first base line that crushed the soul of generations of Red Sox fans, and that's not much of an exaggeration. Boston baseball had been a tale of woe for almost 3 generations, but that game 6 really hardened the Curse of the Bambino in modern minds. Before it, Red Sox fans had their hard luck stories just like many others. After it, the dashed hopes of Boston baseball futility became an epic saga unlike anything else.
While I wouldn't wish that kind of continued suffering on anyone, I also wouldn't mind if I and the rest of the viewing public could have been spared the huge waste of time that is Game 6. If their were truth in advertising laws applied to motion pictures, that's what the title of this film would have to be. "Huge Waste of Time". The only remotely entertaining parts of the whole production are watching the characters watch the final at bats of that legendary game 6. The rest of it is like bits of a New York City comic's stand up routine or the insipid ramblings of a public radio monologist. The only people in this story who have any life to them are terrifically clichéd. The others are like impervious sharks trying to swim their way through the treacle of this script.
Nicky Rogan (Michael Keaton) is a successful playwright in New York with a new drama opening the same night at that fateful contest between the Red Sox and the hometown Mets. His daughter (Ari Graynor) also informs him that his wife wants a divorce, a devastated and disheveled fellow playwright (Griffin Dunne) torments him with word that a piercingly savage critic (Robert Downey Jr.) is certain to destroy the play in his review, his leading man is suffering from a memory-eating parasite and Nicky also happens to be a huge Sox fan and is filled with foreboding about the game. Well, that last one is what the audience it told. The reality is that Nicky doesn't act like someone who gives a fig for baseball or the Red Sox until they get to the part where he's in a bar watching the game with a disgustingly positive cabbie and her grandson (Lillias White and Amir Ali Said).
Now, while their roles are shallow and simplistic, the cast does more than adequate work. The individual scenes on their own are tolerable. The way they're all connected, the structure of the narrative, is flat and lifeless and phony. There's a lot of little things to criticize, but let me focus on the biggest and most obvious.
In the aforementioned scene with Nicky, the cabbie and her grandson, it's all about the cabbie and her grandson exhorting Nicky to give up his practiced cynicism and self-comforting doubt. They encourage him to believe in life, believe in his team and believe good things happen. And then the Red Sox lose. Now, by all rights, shouldn't the scene conclude with a gargantuan speech by Nicky where he tears both the cabbie and her son a new one for getting his hopes up? Something like that, right? Whether it's played for drama or laughs, that's the only logical conclusion there could possibly be.
Well, not if you're writer Don DeLillo or director Michael Hoffman. They conclude the scene with Nicky have a hallucination that the Red Sox won, a fantasy he's not dissuaded of until after he gets into a fight with a couple of Mets fans in the bathroom. And that's exactly how it goes. Nicky has the fantasy of Buckner catching the ball and the next scene is in the bathroom where the Mets fans tell him he's dreaming. What happened to the cabbie and her grandson? How did Nicky not immediately turn to them to celebrate his delusion? How did they not tell the crazy man that his team had indeed lost? I don't know. The cabbie and her grandson vanish and are never seen or heard from again.
What the hell, man? How is that sequence supposed to make any emotional or thematic sense? It's the most important scene in the movie. The three characters in it are playing out a clearly defined dynamic. Then when the climactic moment comes it's like the cabbie and her grandson never existed and none of the things they said ever happened. That's how these storytellers handle the most crucial and significant moment in their story, so I think you can imagine what the rest of it is like.
The real game 6 was one of the most searingly painful experiences ever in sports. The cinematic Game 6 is without any reality, painful or otherwise. Even if you're a big devotee of the New York theater scene, there's nothing here worth your time or trouble.
While I wouldn't wish that kind of continued suffering on anyone, I also wouldn't mind if I and the rest of the viewing public could have been spared the huge waste of time that is Game 6. If their were truth in advertising laws applied to motion pictures, that's what the title of this film would have to be. "Huge Waste of Time". The only remotely entertaining parts of the whole production are watching the characters watch the final at bats of that legendary game 6. The rest of it is like bits of a New York City comic's stand up routine or the insipid ramblings of a public radio monologist. The only people in this story who have any life to them are terrifically clichéd. The others are like impervious sharks trying to swim their way through the treacle of this script.
Nicky Rogan (Michael Keaton) is a successful playwright in New York with a new drama opening the same night at that fateful contest between the Red Sox and the hometown Mets. His daughter (Ari Graynor) also informs him that his wife wants a divorce, a devastated and disheveled fellow playwright (Griffin Dunne) torments him with word that a piercingly savage critic (Robert Downey Jr.) is certain to destroy the play in his review, his leading man is suffering from a memory-eating parasite and Nicky also happens to be a huge Sox fan and is filled with foreboding about the game. Well, that last one is what the audience it told. The reality is that Nicky doesn't act like someone who gives a fig for baseball or the Red Sox until they get to the part where he's in a bar watching the game with a disgustingly positive cabbie and her grandson (Lillias White and Amir Ali Said).
Now, while their roles are shallow and simplistic, the cast does more than adequate work. The individual scenes on their own are tolerable. The way they're all connected, the structure of the narrative, is flat and lifeless and phony. There's a lot of little things to criticize, but let me focus on the biggest and most obvious.
In the aforementioned scene with Nicky, the cabbie and her grandson, it's all about the cabbie and her grandson exhorting Nicky to give up his practiced cynicism and self-comforting doubt. They encourage him to believe in life, believe in his team and believe good things happen. And then the Red Sox lose. Now, by all rights, shouldn't the scene conclude with a gargantuan speech by Nicky where he tears both the cabbie and her son a new one for getting his hopes up? Something like that, right? Whether it's played for drama or laughs, that's the only logical conclusion there could possibly be.
Well, not if you're writer Don DeLillo or director Michael Hoffman. They conclude the scene with Nicky have a hallucination that the Red Sox won, a fantasy he's not dissuaded of until after he gets into a fight with a couple of Mets fans in the bathroom. And that's exactly how it goes. Nicky has the fantasy of Buckner catching the ball and the next scene is in the bathroom where the Mets fans tell him he's dreaming. What happened to the cabbie and her grandson? How did Nicky not immediately turn to them to celebrate his delusion? How did they not tell the crazy man that his team had indeed lost? I don't know. The cabbie and her grandson vanish and are never seen or heard from again.
What the hell, man? How is that sequence supposed to make any emotional or thematic sense? It's the most important scene in the movie. The three characters in it are playing out a clearly defined dynamic. Then when the climactic moment comes it's like the cabbie and her grandson never existed and none of the things they said ever happened. That's how these storytellers handle the most crucial and significant moment in their story, so I think you can imagine what the rest of it is like.
The real game 6 was one of the most searingly painful experiences ever in sports. The cinematic Game 6 is without any reality, painful or otherwise. Even if you're a big devotee of the New York theater scene, there's nothing here worth your time or trouble.