6.4 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
A fading baseball player is traded to a Japanese team and has trouble fitting into the society.
Starring: Tom Selleck, Ken Takakura, Aya Takanashi, Dennis Haysbert, Toshi ShioyaSport | 100% |
Comedy | 22% |
Romance | 21% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
It's springtime again and that means the boys of summer are through with their training stints in Florida and Arizona and are ready to delight fans -- however many fans can actually attend ballgames in 2021 -- with all of the on-field heroics, the big hits, the improbable strikeouts, and the pursuit of the pennant that give shape to every baseball season. So what better time to take a look at the always enjoyable 1992 baseball film Mr. Baseball about an aging player who finds a fresh start, and opens up his heart, in the most unlikely of places. The film offers little of intrinsic artistic merit or high yield drama -- it ranges from generically tender to mildly lowbrow with some fun character confrontations and baseball action along the way -- but has plenty on tap to delight fans looking for a simple movie about life, love, and culture shock in the guise of a baseball film.
Mr. Baseball swigs onto Blu-ray with a decent, though certainly less than ideal, 1080p transfer. It's immediately clear that the Blu-ray presentation is sourced form an older master, probably the same from previous DVD releases. The opening titles wobble and wave in a rather inauspicious beginning. There's some mild processing in play. Grain is a little clumpy and digitized-looking and less organic. Some mild edge enhancement remains in play as well. There's a feel of mild artificial sharpening and some noise reduction as well. But the 1080p resolution allows the image to hold serve. Details have not been scrubbed so intensely as to render skin looking like wax. Some solid essential details remain, on skin for sure but also uniforms, odds and ends around the locker room, and details on and around the field of play. It's sharp, in general, and while somewhat inorganic still pleasing at a base level. Colors are fairly stout, nicely vibrant (particularly Dragons blue), and well saturated. Nuance is lacking but for an image that was clearly prepared for a lower resolution display, things aren't at all bad here. Skin tones are a little pasty, particularly as they show mild signs of the noise reduction. Blacks are OK. There are a few pops and speckles but nothing egregious. There are no obvious compression artifacts of note.
Mr. Baseball's DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless soundtrack is at least the audio equivalent of a hard-hit single. The track is relatively strong in the aggregate, presenting music and score with commendable vitality and front stage stretch. Clarity is never perfect but there's something to be said for the raw energy and enthusiasm the track has on display. Crowd din at baseball games can be disappointing, sounding more muddled and packed together -- even as it's stretched along the front -- where there's little separation to the various elements. Here is where a more finely engineered original sound design, as well as one with additional channels at its disposal, would have created a more filling and immersive baseball environment. Dialogue drives most of the film and it's presented with fine foundational clarity and center imaging.
No supplemental content is included. The film begins playback upon disc insertion. There is no "top menu" screen. The "pop up" menu only offers options to toggle subtitles on and off. No DVD or digital copies are included with purchase. This release does not ship with a slipcover.
Mr. Baseball is one of the more fundamentally fun baseball films out there. It's not as biting as Bull Durham, not so funny as Major League, not so dramatically satisfying as Field of Dreams, not so narratively effective as The Natural, but it's a solid picture that blends together character growth,
romance, and some baseball action to fine effect. The Blu-ray is featureless, the video is decent, and the audio is passable. Recommended.
On a
complete and total random personal note, Mr. Baseball was the first movie I ever ordered on pay-per-view waaaay back in the day. It
required a
phone call to the cable company to get it working properly and I missed the first third or so of the movie. Irrelevant to the review but still a fun little
nugget from my personal movie memories and
history.
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