A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

***Spoiler Alert*** No offense to "Field of Dreams" or "The Sandlot" but "The Natural" is the best baseball movie ever made, in my opinion. Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) is a baseball phenom as a child and is certain to become a big league star someday. As a young child while playing baseball with his father, his father has a sudden heart attack and dies under a tree in their yard. Several years later, that same tree is struck by lightning and broken into pieces. Hobbs makes a special bat from that tree in his father's honor and names the bat "Wonderboy". When Hobbs gets older he has a chance for a tryout to play in the big leagues. While on his way to the tryout, he gets the chance strikeout a famous major league hitter names Whammer. After striking out Whammer with pitches one could barely see. Hibbs then meets a lady by the name of Harriet Bird (Barbara Hershey) who befriends Hobbs but then shoots him before committing suicide. This would take Hobbs out of the game for 15 years before he would reappear and be given a chance with the last place New York Knights. This is when the theme of the movie, redemption, begins to unfold. The manager of the Knights, Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley), thinks Hobbs is just a middle-aged rookie with no chance of being a contributor to the team. For a while, Pops just lets Hobbs languish on the bench while the Knights continue to lose. One day at batting practice, Pops witnesses Hobbs hit home run after home run into the stands and decides it's time to give Hobbs a chance to play. Hobbs dominates and becomes the most feared hitter in baseball. As his star rises so does the success of the team and by the end of the year, the Knights have a chance at winning the pennant. The past begins to come back to haunt Hobbs as his injury he suffered while being shot 15 years ago flares up and lands him in the hospital just as the Knights are on the verge of winning the pennant. Hobbs wills his way out of the hospital and onto the field as the Knights are struggling and on the verge of missing out on the pennant. Hobbs plays in the last game and strikes out the first few times he comes to the plate. During his last at bat, his prized bat shatters while hitting a foul ball. He takes a bat from the bat boy and proceeds to hit a majestic home run that shatters the light stand on the roof in right field and wins the pennant for the Knights. "The Natural" uses clever lighting techniques during the final scene where Hobbs hits the home run into the light stand and sparks start flying all over the sky and even onto the players on the field. I also enjoyed the movie's use of sound during the game scenes where you could hear the fans yelling at the players and the sounds of the crack of the bat while hitting the bar. The film has similarities to movies like "Rocky" where the main character rises from nothing to become a hero. I love the story of redemption and I will watch this movie any time it appears on TV.

I enjoy this movie whenever I see it which proves you don't need to be a baseball or even a sports fan to like this story. However I don't think the movie is about baseball. I believe it to be an allegory of America. From it's youthful hopefulness to its near death (civil war?)to its excess (eating until it (he) bursts). The movie culminating in an ever bright future while the book was decidedly more pessimistic. And with all this you can choose to ignore these subtleties and just enjoy a good story well told.

The Natural might have one of the best scores of all time. That soundtrack is epic. It really carries the entire movie and these long homeruns. But there are several negatives:1 ) The movie does not follow the book - consequently a 50 year old Redford plays a 19 and then a 35 year old Hobbs. Doesn't make any sense.2 ) This movie really isn't about baseball, and isn't a good fantasy adaptation. It lacks dramatic dimension -not enough suspense - nothing at stakes.3 ) Hobbs should be on a mission to redeem himself, not cruise with knock out hits from the get go. Hobbs' passion for baseball is not sufficiently illustrated, that's the problem. Therefore, including subplots is a negative because it derives from the point: Hobbs forgot the meaning of baseball in his life.I can't say anything wrong about the acting, it's very good. But the epic fantasy that we get in Field of Dreams is missing in the Natural. It's so unfortunate because the book is so good, and there aren't that many baseball movies. But, overall, it leaves me on a positive note.

This is one of those movies that I realize I'm in the distinct minority by disliking so strongly, but I feel this epitomizes the type of vanity platform for Robert Redford similar to these demonstrated a few years later by Kevin Costner, especially in Wyatt Earp and The Postman.I recall this film having an excessive use of slow-motion, especially after Redford's character hits a home run (he never seemed to do anything but hit those or strike out - not even a triple could be written into the script). Other characters were clichés right out of central casting, particularly Robert Prosky's. Like so many sports movies that try to adopt story lines with nearly biblical meanings, this one takes itself WAY too seriously.