Patient: Hardball
Profile: Hateful, hateful, hateful movie about degenerate gambler who turns a ragtag bunch of African-American kids into a championship baseball team. Ostensibly about the courage of inner-city children but actually about how lame black people are and how much better off they are when they listen to their white superiors—even when those white superiors are degenerate gamblers. Think The Bad News Bears meets White Man's Burden meets Hollywood Shuffle meets Birth of a Nationmeets All I Ever Really Needed to Know About Black People I Learned WatchingStarsky and Hutch.
Script Doctor
Symptoms: This isn't just a bad movie; it's an evil one, mostly for its presumptions. You know, the ones about how black kids are a pitiable lot with filthy mouths whose mothers are totally useless, as opposed to the white gambler and the white teacher who valiantly stoop to help. Poor pathetic black people. Nice stooping white people. And where's black dad? Why, he's a crack dealer/gangbanger/child murderer, of course. There isn't a single non-awful black male adult in this movie. Not one. There's plenty of references to black dads abandoning families and how angry that makes the kids. Still, the kids dance all the time—you know, in that minstrel style the kids are so crazy for. They even dance while they pitch and while they sing songs about getting lots of women pregnant. Yes, it's the circle of life! The movie's cynical intentions are never clearer as when the cutest, cuddliest cast member is killed off. Yes, “G-Baby” must die, and die he does, in such a contrived manner that you expect someone to say the real tragedy is that “G-Baby” was just two days from retirement. So contrived, in fact, that when “G-Baby” got shot through the heart, a kid close to me said, “Oh, that's original.” And people laughed! I still don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. But I do know this: fuck you if you see this movie.
Diagnosis: Seriously, fuck you.
Prescription: I have a dream that one day a bunch of white guys will make a movie about a white degenerate who'll teach young black children how disgusting their lives are. And I have a dream that those black children will teach that white guy creative ways of cursing and avoiding small-arms fire. And I have a dream that those bunch of white guys pay for making this movie by being forced to endure scalding-coffee enemas. And if it sounds like my dream isn't punitive enough, consider that the coffee enemas are simply to make sure the white guys are fully awake when they begin the round-the-clock barium enemas.
Note to Script Nurse: DNR (Do Not Resuscitate).
