The Wonder of Wonderboy.

The Natural is directed by Barry Levinson and adapted to screenplay by Roger Towne & Phil Dusenberry from the novel written by Bernard Malamud. It stars Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Wilford Brimley, Barbara Hershey, Robert Prosky and Richard Farnsworth. Music is by Randy Newman and cinematography by Caleb Deschanel.

The Natural is a wistful sports movie, one that asks every person who views it to buy into the whimsy and mythologising on show. If able to do that then it's a film of beguiling beauty, awash with strength of the human spirit and of luscious technical credits. The Arthurian core to Roy Hobbs' (Redford a superb presence yet calmness personified) second chance ensures we always know this is fanciful stuff, but that's just fine, we are in Field of Dreams territory here and fans of such fare are rewarded royally. Period art design, photography and musical score are grade "A", snuggling up nicely with a support cast to Redford that is of high end proportions. If it's in you and you know what sort of film to expect, you may well, come the end, be punching the air whilst having a tear in your eye. Lovely film making. 8.5/10

It's hard to make a good sports movie and I know this movie is based off a book and all but that dosen't mean I have to like the way everything goes in the movie. I mean this movie was just to out of the ordinary but with a tone that said it wanted to be simple. {SPOILERS} I mean the dude gets shot because he wanted to be the best baseball player who ever lived? Jump to 16 years later... wait are we not going to talk about that or..? Then this movie dives into luck a lot with the lighting bolt on his bat and the tree that was struck by lighting which the bat was made out of, and the lighting patches on jerseys which made the team all play better then a curse when he starts seeing this one girl and then something about a bet with a manager or someone and him also trying to pay players to make the game go a certain way. I mean come on if you want to go those directions with the movie go there just stop just poking these ideas then moving onto the next thing. If it wasn't for Redford and Glenn Close this movie would be even a travesty.

Many, many years ago when I was a bit of a sports fan, I remember reading stories about scouts who had seen athletes in the olden days like Roy Hobbs. Players who could hit a ball a mile or throw a hundred mile per hour fastball, but who never made it to the big league for some reason. But of course, this movie is based on a novel by Bernard Malamud, though there are hints of actual events here and there.

It is an entertaining movie, presenting baseball as America’s game and therefore, ultimately, above corruption. It has an old timey feel, perhaps even older than the 1939 setting that is presented. The movie is less gloomy than the book, and I guess the purists don’t like that, but for me, life is gloomy enough and the mood and ending were just fine with me. (And I did read the book.) Since actual events and people from bygone days are cleaned up and mythologized for our history books, why get upset when fictional stories are purified with a rose colored lens?