Things never turn out how you plan.

For Love of the Game isn't a sports movie, it's a love story. It just uses major league baseball as a backdrop for the story, showing how the immense social and personal pressures of professional sports effects a relationship. For the most part it's sappy and overly sentimental, but that's really how stories like this always are.

The whole movie exists inside one baseball game with lots and lots of flashbacks. Whenever an entire movie is structured around flashbacks it's always going to be sappy and sentimental - since that's what flashbacks are. But the story can still be touching and accessible. I wouldn't want people who shy away from sports movies to pass on this becuase they think it's a sports movie. Of course, they're welcome to pass on it because it's just a sappy love story. But I'm guessing that the people who pass on those two genre's are different people, which actually makes this a decent crossover movie.

Of course it's not nearly the excellent crossover movie that Jerry Maguire is. I thought about Jerry Maguire a lot during this one. It's also a love story with some sports in it and Kelly Preston is in both. She's a much different chracter in each film though - I just can't get over the first scene where we see her in Maguire (unfortunately I can't reprint that quote, it's no good for family audiences.) Hmmm, maybe I should go watch that one again.

Damn is this movie sappy. But at least it has good music.

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