The Final Season

Real-life sports story will make you stand up and boo

By Matt Pais

Critic's Rating:

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An evil school board determines that the lone high school in Norway, Iowa--where nobody smokes and kids make guns in shop class---will merge with another school after Norway’s 19-time champion baseball team’s last season. So new head coach Kent Stock (Sean Astin) tries to go out on top, with help from a rebellious Chicago import (Michael Angarano of “Almost Famous”) who’s called “city boy” and romances the sister of his rival on the team.

Big question: Can audiences handle another underdog story starring “Rudy,” er, Astin?

Skip it: At this point only four places (Cleveland, Boston, Colorado, Arizona) really want to hear about championship baseball anyway, and “Based on a true story” is no excuse for lines like “You don’t have it in you to let these kids down.” The acting’s worse than a school play, the last shot’s identical to director David Mickey Evans’ superior “The Sandlot,” and these kids don’t even seem to realize that they won’t be in high school forever.

Catch it: If you long to live somewhere where “We grow ballplayers here like corn.” Please do not try ordering center-fielder-on-the-cob.

Bottom line: If clichés were pies, “The Final Season” would be Baker’s Square. (As it turns out, the movie is so desperate to be a slice of uncorrupted Americana from the heartland that it practically oozes apple pie from the screen.) And if your idea of a sports movie includes slow-witted small-towners, a cute little girl singing the national anthem and an awful Rachel Leigh Cook as a lawyer who inexplicably falls for the coach, well, that’s three strikes for you.

Bonus: You vote on the movie’s silliest moment. Two months of baseball flying by in about 45 seconds; a small-town Iowa paper that shows up in New York as if it’s USA Today; or Tom Arnold as the Chicago kid’s dad remembering when he once streaked through a retirement home!