Day 83: "If you build it, they will come."

Field of Dreams is one of those movies that I would admit to having never seen to my friends, and I would get everything from shocked stares to "No way have you gone all these years without seeing THAT one!"  It's true.  Up until today, I have never seen it.  It was kind of the same situation as Jaws, except NOBODY believed that I never saw that until I was in my late twenties.  Anyway, back to the movie du jour: Field of Dreams.  I have to say, it was over-hyped.  My dislike of Kevin Costner aside (more on that later), the story seemed really corny and too touchy-feely for me.  The premise was alright; a farmer hears a voice coming from his cornfield, heeds its advice, builds a baseball diamond, and reunites with a lot of classic baseball players.  Ultimately, he discovers that you have to follow your dreams, without worrying about the opinions of others.  Very 40's stuff here.  I feel almost un-American for not liking this more, but it bored the pants off me.  Call me nuts, but in this humble reviewer's eyes, For the Love of the Game was the better Costner baseball movie.  So sue me.

When I first saw Kevin Costner in No Way Out, I thought that he was going to be great.  After seeing most everything else he's done, I think he's a hack who got lucky.  His performance is just as wooden in Field as in the rest of his body of work.  He's angry: stone face, he's happy: stone face, he's sad: stone face.  You see where I'm going here.  Amy Madigan and James Earl Jones do a lot to keep this movie afloat, as does Ray Liotta as "Shoeless" Joe Jackson's ghost.

I can't say that this is the classic that most people believe it to be.  It wants to be an uplifting, touching family film about the power of dreams, but it just doesn't have the impact I had hoped for.  Maybe I should have watched something else and kept the illusion in my mind that I was really missing something here, but doing this blog is my dream, even though everyone said I was crazy, gosh-darn-it, I'm following my dream.  Sorry, too sarcastic?  5.75/10

See you tomorrow, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!