The saga’s third (and last, for now) film, “Major League: Back to the Minors” (1998) definitely belongs in the minor leagues. I had always held “Little Big League” (1994) to be the worst film using the Minnesota Twins as the stand-in team, but that’s only because I didn’t know about this one.
Sloppy set-up
Maybe the Indians were too successful in the real world at this time; maybe the Twins needed some extra licensing cash. At any rate, Corben Bernsen’s Roger Dorn is now running the Twins instead of the Indians, and the switchover is never mentioned in the dialog.
We just realize when the action moves to the Metrodome: “Oh, Dorn runs the Twins now. Oh, OK, the South Carolina Buzz are the Triple-A affiliate of the Twins.”
To commemorate baseball’s All-Star Break, Reviews from My Couch is looking back at the films of the “Major League” franchise from July 13-15.
“Major League: Back to the Minors” (1998)
Director: John Warren
Writer: John Warren
Stars: Scott Bakula, Corben Bernsen, Dennis Haysbert
As writer-director John Warren steps into the saga, “Minors” includes lots of things that aren’t quite like real baseball. We just have to say “Oh, so that’s how things work in the movie’s reality.” Sure, the first two entries stretch logic, but not to this degree.
For starters, this Triple-A team is more like what an independent league team would be in reality, including a mix of youngsters who lack a full skill set and veterans past their prime.
“Minors” centers on a feud between Scott Bakula’s Buzz manager Gus Cantrell and comically hotheaded Twins manager Leonard Huff (Ted McGinley, whose teeth look like Christian Bale’s). The feud emerges from random taunts over dinner and escalates to absurd (but unfortunately not quite funny) proportions.
The Twins and Buzz play a couple of exhibition games — one at the Metrodome, one at the Buzz’s field (shot in Charleston). But unlike real games of this nature, the managers and players hate each other’s guts, and the media cover the games like they mean something.
Missing laughs
This time around, one of the players is a former ballet dancer, and sadly, that’s the funniest new gag.
Bob Uecker is back in the booth – it’s totally unexplained why Harry Doyle is working for a Twins minor-league team now – and he does professional work. But it’s clear Uecker is reading a screenplay rather than ad-libbing. Every line from the first two films is superior to his best line here.
Dennis Haysbert and a couple other former Indians (who all just happen to land with the Buzz) are in the movie to make people think it’s a legitimate sequel.
Rookie Billy “Downtown” Anderson (Walton Goggins, “The Unicorn”) actually gets a real arc about how his confidence outstrips his current talent level. I’ll try to incorporate Gus’s advice to “hit the inside of the ball” as I attempt to hit to the opposite field in rec-league softball.
Anderson’s arc isn’t exactly compelling, but it gives the movie something that’s not totally silly, at least.
“Back to the Minors” – which awkwardly uses CGI to show the ball’s flight — is caught between wanting to explore real baseball issues (but it’s too far removed from reality) and wanting to be a comedy (but it’s rarely funny).
So I owe an apology to “Little Big League”: It’s not the worst movie made about a fictional Minnesota Twins club.