People won't come, Ray...

I think it's time for another retro movie review. This time, let's take a look at "Field of Dreams", which I caught on TV the other day. Here's my review. First, in Haiku form:

Baseball dreams come true
On an Iowa cornfield.
This movie still sucked.

Field of Dreams is not a good movie. First of all, the casting is flipping redonkulous, if I may borrow a term coined by Tina Fey on SNL Weekend Update. As we all know, Kevin Costner is a noted lame actor. See "Water World", "Dragonfly", "3000 Miles to Graceland", "For Love of the Game", "The Bodyguard", "Bull Durham" (yes, Bull Durham sucked, get over it) and "The Postman." Not since "The Untouchables" has he made a good movie, and even then he made Eliot Ness seem like an absolute pussy. Anyway, as we all know, he plays Ray Kinsella in the movie: the patriarch, half-farmer, half-ballfield builder, and hearer of whispered, ambiguous phrases. He kidnaps James Earl Ray, who I think shot Lincoln. No, wait, it was James Earl Jones that shot Kennedy. That's it. Anyway, he kidnaps Darth Vader because he wrote an article about baseball or something. The point is that not even the voice of CNN could save this movie. I mean, Roy Jones, Jr. is a good actor. I really respect him. That's my little joke. Of course I mean James Earl Jones. A great actor who's wasted on this turd film. And don't get me started on that red-headed wife of Ray Kinsella's, Amy Madigan. She's not pretty and she makes my skin crawl every time she speaks. She has a grating voice that sounds like she smokes about 3 packs of cigs and a cuban every hour on the hour. I think she originally left a bad taste in my mouth as John Candy's love interest in "Uncle Buck." Did you know that "Uncle Buck" and "Field of Dreams" were made in the same year, 1989? Interesting fact for me to poop on. Anyway, this movie would be WAY better if they would have cast a significantly hotter chick for the role of Annie Kinsella, like Elisabeth Shue or Kim Basinger (pronounced Bass-in-jur).

Hey, here's another sucky thing about "Field of Dreams." How about when Ray's daughter falls 6 feet off the back of the bleachers and takes a header onto some nice hard Iowan soil? Ray stops his wife from calling 911 and just sits there and waits to see if a ballplayer-turned-doctor ghost MIGHT just find the time to come over and lend a hand. In the meantime, the little girl's brain is being deprived of precious oxygen due to a giant hunk of ballpark hot dog jammed into her larnyx. FOR FUCK SAKE, RAY, THIS IS NO TIME TO AID A GHOST ON HIS PATH TO THE AFTERLIFE! SAVE YOUR FUCKING DAUGHTER! And then the ballplayer-turned-doctor whacks the kid on the back and the no-longer-hot-but-now-body-temperature dog flies out. Kid fine. Well anyone could have fucking done that! Shit! Thank God the ghost was there to whack my kid on the back and save her life. Phew! Then two minutes later the little girl is smiling and carrying on like she DIDN'T just almost die in the hot Iowa sunshine. Someone needs to teach that kid about the finality of death. Then maybe she'll fear death rather than carry on like life is just a fun game where daddy hears voices and ghosts play baseball. (Interesting side note: the little girl was played by Gaby Hoffman who was also in "Uncle Buck." Methinks I see a pattern here. Let's just thank the good Lord that Macaulay Culkin wasn't cast as some sort of ghost that was left home without parents only to set several crafty booby traps to thwart the attempts of Joe Pesci to steal the family underpants.)

So, at the end of the movie, James Earl Jones and all the ballplayers have disappeared into the corn field abyss to sleep or haunt or roam the night like any ghost would do. Only Ray's ghost dad remains (Another horrible movie, by the way, "Ghost Dad" starring Bill Cosby). Ray and his spooky father play catch while the obligatory movie-ending helicopter camera shot rises up to reveal a redonkulously long line of cars funneling into the Kinsella farm. Now, first of all, where the hell are they all going to park? Second of all, all the ball players are GONE. What are these people going to watch? Ray and his ghost dad play catch? Ghost or no ghost, that would be pretty lame to watch. So these people drop $20 apiece to watch some long overdue father-son bonding. What a ripoff. I could take a family of 4 to a GOOD movie, then feed them all at Popeyes, and STILL come out ahead.

On a sassy scale of 3.7 to 12, I give this movie a 6.5.

P.S. Do you want to see a REAL field of dreams? Here you go:


The Ganja