The Final Season Critic Reviews

The movie is decent and heartfelt, and it eventually settles into some sharp diamond action, but the small-town homilies are dropped like an anvil. If you thought 1993's "Rudy" was too spare and unsentimental, Final Season is for you.Read the full review

Nathan Wang's score borrows blatantly from "The Natural" and is slathered on thick in all the big emotional scenes. They establish the right nostalgic mood, but it's broken with that loud "ping" of a metal bat every time a kid gets a hit.Read the full review

Follows a predictable format.Read the full review

There's not quite as much corn in The Final Season as there is in the Iowa farm fields that run through it, but it's close.Read the full review

Evans' goal is to do for high school baseball what "Hoosiers" did for high school basketball, but to mention both titles in one sentence is almost an insult to a picture that many rank as the first or second all-time sports film.Read the full review

In a movie where the timing of a squeeze bunt is presented as the thing of beauty that it is, and the eradication of small-town culture in a changing world is a genuine concern, the simplifying countrified morality of The Final Season is the real crying shame.Read the full review

All these stereotypes are meant to exalt small-town values, but The Final Season is proof that it's hard to paint masterpiece in broad strokes.Read the full review