thoughts on Million Dollar Arm

Jon Hamm stars as JB, a sports agent who, in the vein of Jerry Maguire, has recently struck out on his own with only a couple of loyal employees and isn't doing great so far.  He is close to landing a very promising client; however, when said client decides to go with a bigger sports management firm that can afford to pay him a $1,000,000 signing bonus, JB must come up with a big idea to keep his little firm afloat.  After flipping back and forth between a cricket match and Britan's Got Talent on TV one night, he's got it: he will travel to India and launch a "million dollar arm" contest to try to find Indian cricket players to bring back to the United States and train to be Major League baseball players.

Let me be clear about one thing: I love Disney sports films (Miracle, The Mighty Ducks, The Rookie, etc.), so I can handle-- and, in fact, was looking forward to-- a movie about underdogs overcoming obstacles to achieve a goal.  I certainly wouldn't give this film a hard time if its only problems were that it was formulaic or cheesy, which it is at times.  The issue is that after a few somewhat promising and interesting early scenes in India as JB and his employees go about the process of recruiting players, once JB gets back to the United States with two would-be ball players and a translator/would-be coach in tow (Rinku, Dinesh, and Amit, played by Suraj Sharma, Madhur Mattal, and Pitobash, respectively), the movie becomes less about the contest and more about how JB becomes a better person through acting as sort of a father figure to the young Indian men.  Before, JB was living a somewhat shallow bachelor life full of one-night stands with models but bereft of much real human interaction; the only people we see him check in with during his time in India are Aash (Aasif Mandvi), the employee who initially introduces him to cricket, and Brenda (Lake Bell), the medical student who rents his guest house.  After returning to the United States, JB makes a bunch of mistakes that can be chalked up to the fact that he's treating Rinku and Dinesh like commodities rather than people.  It initially doesn't occur to him that he should actually go and watch them practice and look after their general well-being, what with them being new to the United States, and all; instead, he drops them off at practice each day, orders them pizza each night, and for entertainment, takes them to a wild party and sets them loose while he tries to land a deal (spoiler alert: this doesn't end well).  He pushes them into their tryouts for the Majors before they are ready.

One frustrating thing about all of this is that JB has several people warning him every time he's about to make a mistake, and every time, he stubbornly pushes ahead and then acts angry and surprised when things turn out exactly as everyone told him they would, and exactly as any fool could see they would.  Because of this, this movie is, as previously noted, less about an interesting (if not selfishly motivated) idea for a contest and the people who participate in it and more about a jerk who learns to be less of a jerk.  Why not tell the story from Rinku and Dinesh's perspectives and actually develop their characters? JB would still necessarily play a large role in the whole thing.  Jon Hamm could still play him.  I just think that Rinku and Dinesh are probably more interesting people than JB, but we never really get to learn whether or not that's true.  I know that people made similar comments about The Blind Side-- that the movie was more about how Leigh Anne Tuohy saved Michael Oher than about Michael Oher-- but at least Leigh Anne Tuohy as played by Sandra Bullock was an interesting character.  JB really is not.

There are some moments of Disney sweetness, mainly involving JB's eventual (and perhaps inevitable) romance with Brenda.  Case in point: Brenda invites JB back to the guest house one night.  We see them kiss.  We gather, based on the fact that Rinku, Dinesh, and Amit catch JB leaving the guest house the next morning, that they slept together, but we don't actually see it, and JB has to gently tell the guys that just because he and Brenda spent the night together doesn't mean they're going to get married (though, spoiler alert, we learn before the closing credits that in real life, JB and Brenda actually do.  Did I mention that this is all based on a true story?).  Moments like this are nice, and Brenda is fine as a "cool girlfriend who helps the jerk guy change his ways" kind of character (other examples of this type of character include Jennifer Garner in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Jennifer Garner in Draft Day, which was the last movie I saw in a theater before this one, and which was so boring I didn't even bother to review it, in case you were curious). Jon Hamm is also fine as JB in that you always believe that Jon Hamm is good deep-down even when he's playing guys that often do bad things, which also works for him as Don Draper on Mad Men.  I just really feel like Disney made a mistake by having this film revolve so heavily around JB, though.