The Natural or The Naturally Boring?

"The Natural" directed by Barry Levinson starring Robert Redford as the rookie baseball player Roy Hobbs, might be on of the most bland movies I have ever seen in my life. Where was the excitement? The substance behind the plot? Sure, there were different ideas floating around during the length of the movie, however, none of it was exciting. Even when they were trying to make something thrilling or moving...it wasn't.

Roy Hobbs is a "old man" rookie baseball player who comes back to the game after fifteen years of being out from an injury. That injury was that he happened to be shot. Like hello?! He was shot, that could have been exemplified a little bit more. I understand that he was trying to keep it a secret, but they didn't even mention it at the end of the film. If Roy Hobbs being shot was released to the public, he would have become an even bigger star from coming back from such a catastrophic injury.

Also, where was the romance? I mean it was there for Roy Hobbs first with the risqué Memo Paris (Kim Basinger) and then again when he falls in love with his soon to be wife Iris Gaines (Glenn Close), but it wasn't well portrayed. There were no intense love scenes, or happy flirty scenes. There were only boring scenes with attempted cuteness that wasn't very successful. The only attempted intense love scene was when Iris stands up in the crowd during one of the games, and when Roy sees her he spontaneously gets out of his slump. Boring. Just plain boring.

And the tone...wow. I felt myself falling asleep during the entire movie because the tone was so boring. I think that the producers were trying to pull off a mysterious vibe with all of the characters, but it just didn't come out that way. It came out that they all had the same personality and tone of voice throughout every single scene.

In my opinion this is one of those movies that is just left better as a novel because when you try to make a good novel into a movie, 95% of the time it doesn't come out as good. This could have made a great movie if it just had a little extra "oomph" put in it. But since it was monotonous, bland, and boring I would only give this movie a 1 out of 5 star rating.