'Million Dollar Arm' - Movie Review

The movie starts with our sports agent protagonist J.B. Bernstein (Jon Hamm) trying - and failing - to recruit a massively successful football star. Formula start: protagonist is basically a decent guy, but with problems, both personal and financial. He's trying to do the right thing, he's failing. But then he has an IDEA (TM). He'll go to India and find a cricket bowler who will be the next great baseball pitcher. So he sets off, setting up his humorously eccentric team of helpers in the process. You can perhaps see where this is going? He struggles, he finds possible stars, there are setbacks, he learns to be a better person. So - pure Disney in some of the best ways and a couple of the bad ways. It changes little that this is relatively close to being a true story. But it benefits from a good script by Tom McCarthy (he's an actor, but also a writer, and most famously the writer-director of the superb movies "The Station Agent" and "The Visitor") and good acting. Very few would accuse the final product of being "a classic," but it's nevertheless charming, very funny, and hugely enjoyable. I'd say there's a good chance I'll watch it again, just because it was so much fun.