Million Dollar Arm review

Hamm takes up cricket scouting

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Despite the off-piste indie pasts of writer Thomas McCarthy ( The Visitor ) and director Craig Gillespie ( Lars And The Real Girl ), Disney’s based-on-true-life sports pic never dodges genre cliché. Take Jon Hamm’s cynical agent, who has the money-raking wheeze of training young Indians in baseball but needs lessons in humanity. Or his endlessly patient tenant (Lake Bell), serving redemption on legs; or the Indian kids (Suraj Sharma, Madhur Mittal), reduced to culture-clash/training-montage fodder.

Hamm and Bell keep this hooey light, but you can’t lob a ball in here without hitting notes played better in Jerry Maguire and Slumdog Millionaire .

Freelance writer

Kevin Harley is a freelance journalist with bylines at Total Film, Radio Times, The List, and others, specializing in film and music coverage. He can most commonly be found writing movie reviews and previews at GamesRadar+. 

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