The Hill

Grade: C

The Hill is an inspirational “based on a true story” baseball drama with a Christian element. Take the music from The Natural and Field of Dreams, put it on steroids, and you will have The Hill’s relentless manipulative score. Always loud. Always there to hold our hands through every moment. It doesn’t trust us to interpret the action how we may and feel our own feelings. Dennis Quaid really seems to want an Oscar. This is one of the funniest movies of the year.

It has a good heart, and I appreciate that it tells a story that I bet not many people know about, so I won’t slam it with a terrible grade. But damn. The execution is so grave, somber, and treacly. Speaking of “damn,” that word is obviously said on a few occasions if you are reading the actors’ lips, but has been awkwardly overdubbed with “darn.” I think churches and Christian schools would absolutely eat this up, and I could see those places having viewing parties. That’s the third time this year I’ve said that, but they would do much better instead watching On a Wing and a Prayer (which also stars Quaid), or hell, even Jesus Revolution – which I wasn’t crazy about, but is on a slightly higher level than this.

The Hill tells the story of Rickey Hill, who grew up in the 1960’s, and overcame a physical handicap to become a minor league star. In the early childhood scenes, we see him wear big braces on his legs. While they noisily rattle as he runs the bases, the viewer tries enormously hard not to think of Forrest Gump. But he can hit like nobody’s business. His family is not well off. His father is a pastor, and the congregation is modest-sized, to say the least. The film flashes forward in the second half, with Rickey as a young adult – and it feels like literally every single significant character from his younger life comes back into the mix. They don’t seem to have moved too far away or gotten lives of their own. They’ve all been waiting in the wings to return for their callback.

As the father, Dennis Quaid thickly lays on the mugging and the emoting and the preaching and the Southern and the ranting and the raving and the acting up a storm. Bonnie Bedelia as the grandmother (only 6 years older than her onscreen son-in-law Quaid) jarringly jumps back and forth between being at odds with Quaid and wholeheartedly supporting him. Wherever the next convenient sitcommy one-liner can come from. The actor who fares the best is Scott Glenn (The Hunt for Red October, Backdraft, The Silence of the Lambs) in a memorable supporting role. He doesn’t have any awards, but has always been a prolific character actor. I was reminded of how valuable he is, and am grateful he’s still doing the thing at 84 years old.

Events take their usual turns, to the point where I could sometimes predict the dialogue. One character doesn’t make it to the end of the movie, which creates an easy second act plot point. There’s a Dramatic Late Arrival at the end. Other than to hate-watch, you wouldn’t want to die on this Hill.

Grade: C