A Couple of Movies

Years ago we watched the first SANDLOT movie, which I remember as being fairly entertaining for a kid’s baseball movie. We missed the second film in the series, but we recently watched THE SANDLOT 3: HEADING HOME. In typical fantasy fashion, a wealthy, self-centered professional baseball player gets hit on the head by a pitch and finds his adult consciousness inhabiting the 12-year-old body of his kid self, having to relive a pivotal summer in his life and decide whether he wants to follow the same course that he did the first time. Some of the acting is pretty bad and the lines that are supposed to be funny often aren’t, but I got kind of caught up in the story anyway. Nothing here will come as any surprise, but the movie is good-hearted and pleasant enough.

OFF THE MAP is a coming-of-age story about a young, sensitive, intelligent girl who lives with her troubled but somehow still functional family in rural -- really rural -- New Mexico. It’s well-acted and the photography is beautiful. The movie is also arty, pretentious, and slow as mud at times. We picked this one up because Sam Elliott is in it and he’s one of our favorite actors, but he’s not given much to do here except sit around and mope. Kind of like the SANDLOT movie, though, I got interested in this one despite its problems. Joan Allen is good in it, and Valentina de Angelis, who plays the kid, is really good. Worth watching, but you should know going in that it’s definitely leisurely paced. However, as I mentioned to the rest of the family after we’d watched it, sometimes you just need a break from Stuff Blowing Up Real Good, Will Ferrell running around in his underwear (or less), and inspirational, based-on-a-true-story sports movies that include at least one scene where the coach makes the team run back and forth across the field, or the court, or whatever, until they’re ready to drop. OFF THE MAP fits the bill for that.