The Sandlot (1993)

Directed by David Mickey Evans. Starring Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar, Patrick Renna, Chauncey Leopardi, Marty York, Grant Gelt, Denis Leary, Karen Allen, Brandon Quintin Adams, James Earl Jones, Victor Di Matta, Shane Obedzinski, Marley Shelton, (voice) David Mickey Evans. [PG]

Nostalgia-hued story set in 60s suburbia where a group of boys spend their summer days playing baseball at the local sandlot. Considering that he co-wrote, directed, and provides the bluntly patronizing narration, Evans must be borrowing from his past for this episodic patchwork of reminiscences, but he doesn’t demonstrate an original voice while doing so, resorting to pilfering from the likes of Stand by Me (a vomitous vignette and the where-are-they-now roundup), A Christmas Story (the slightly bent tone and the obtrusive voiceover), Our Gang/Little Rascals (too obvious to even explain), and so on. As shamelessly reverent to the mythos of the national pastime as The Natural, there’s precious little substance here, the laughs are few and far between, and the movie spends more than a quarter of its runtime on a silly battle with a colossal junkyard dog that plays out like a lame imitation of a Looney Tunes short in between all the incessant shouting. As for the kids, Renna and Leopardi exhibit some energy and charisma, but shy-guy protagonist Guiry is so uninteresting that it’s easy to forget scene-to-scene what he even looks like! Still, this sincere timesink managed to attain a fervent fan following in the years after its release. Art LaFleur and Arliss Howard make brief appearances. Spawned a couple of direct-to-video sequels.

44/100