As corny as Iowa and as predictable as an intentional walk, “The Final Season” is another nostalgic celebration of baseball as the very embodiment of small-town Americana.
There’s a tiny school, a rich tradition, obstacles for the underdogs to hurdle, villains to be overcome and a big game at the payoff.
And darned if it doesn’t work, at least as well as it has worked so many times in so many movies.
This “true story” of tiny Norway, Iowa’s, last season as a high school baseball power is a sympathetically acted, written and directed allegory of American virtues that have faded with the decline of small towns and the sport we still call “America’s Pastime.”
In the early 1990s, Iowa, in a cost-cutting move duplicated all over the Midwest and prairie states, started consolidating undersized schools, folding them into bigger ones nearby. That wasn’t going to go over well in Norway. Yes, they had only 101 students. But the Norway Tigers were still the dominant team in state baseball circles.
Nineteen state titles in 24 years isn’t bad.
“We grow ballplayers here, like corn,” their longtime coach (Powers Boothe, very good) growls to his new assistant (Sean Astin). “Norway is baseball.”
Economics and politics are about to end that. Norway loses its coach and will lose its school. But at least they’re given one last shot at glory. With an under-qualified assistant in charge, will “Norway baseball” still involve great defense, good pitching and a shot at the title? The kids are solid, even if they are given few chances to stand out in the film.
Michael Angarano plays the big-city punk whose dad (Tom Arnold) ships him off to Norway to learn a little discipline from his grandparents and his less-sophisticated classmates. Asking where he can buy “a little weed” here is likely to earn a 4H lecture.
The script, by Art D’Alessandro and James Grayford, nails the way small towns “get remembered,” and the virtues of smaller schools.
“No one gets left out,” Astin’s coach Stock explains to a budget-cutter (Rachael Leigh Cook). “Everyone participates.”
Director David Mickey Evans, who made the kid-baseball comedies “The Sandlot” and “The Sandlot 2,” knows his way around the diamond and makes the baseball authentic. Astin tempers his aw-shucks persona just enough to be interesting, and Boothe brings the grumpy, guy-in-sunglasses menace he mastered decades before moving to “Deadwood.”
The film doesn’t cover new ground, and for every dialogue bon mot or scene gem, there’s one so faux-folksy as to make you groan.
But “The Final Season” has just enough “Field of Dreams” and “Hoosiers” in it to make anybody nostalgic for a simpler time, a simpler place and a simpler game.
“The Final Season” PG for language, thematic elements and some teen smoking. 1 hour, 54 minutes. Directed by David Mickey Evans; written by Art D’Alessandro and James Grayford; with Sean Astin, Powers Boothe, Michael Angarano, Tom Arnold and Rachael Leigh Cook. Opens today at area
theaters.
