Movie Review: The Final Season

It was the national anthem that put the final nail in "The Final Season" coffin. Out trots a little girl with big glasses to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in a sweet-but-quavering voice guaranteed to melt your heart - which might have worked if your heart hadn't been hardened by the previous 20 gimmicks guaranteed to melt your heart.

"The Final Season" tells the embellished-but-true story of the Norway High School baseball team, which won the Iowa state baseball championship in 1991, the school's final year of existence before it merged with a bigger school.

Norway is a hamlet of some 500 good-hearted souls, and the long-winning team is so important to the identity of the town that most of its citizens turn out not just for games, but for team practice. But when the beloved coach (Powers Boothe) resigns in protest over the plans to merge the high school, it's up to the inexperienced assistant coach (Sean Astin) to motivate the team to their final glory.

"Final Season" can't quite decide who the movie is about. Some characters are introduced late in the film (a pair of journalists designed to offer comic relief don't appear till halfway through), and other characters disappear (the grandparents of a wayward city boy sent to the farm to get straightened up fade away).

I don't mean to discount the accomplishments of the Norway High School baseball team, which won a spate of state championships and produced 16 professional players. It's just that the underdog sports story has been so overdone in recent years that it's hard to make it fresh. And "Final Season" doesn't even seem to be trying for fresh. It's more like the moviemakers were trying to incorporate every sports-movie cliche that's ever been written in an effort to please.

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THE FINAL SEASON

2 stars out of 5

Cast: Sean Astin, Powers Boothe

Rated: 114 min., PG (strong language, thematic elements, some teen smoking)

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