TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE

As you watch the film, "Trouble With The Curve," you will get an uneasy feeling; something will be bothering you and you won't quite know what it is.  This film has a fine cast, Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justine Timberlake,John Goodman, Robert Patrick and two villains, played by Matthew Lillard and Joe Massingill. The setting is fine,  Atlanta and rural North Carolina. The dialog is witty and realistic enough to make the

story line apparent very early on in the unfolding of this tale built around baseball.

So, the question becomes, why did the writer feel it was necessary to repeat almost every scene with a duplicate scene to 

reinforce very basic concepts. There is nothing in this story about the dysfunctional relationship between a father and daughter that is very complex. Yet almost every scene in this film is repeated / retold in a secondary scene. The doctor will

give a medical diagnosis to the father. The best friend of the father, will call the doctor and the diagnosis will be repeated.

I think you can see what is coming, the daughter now talks to the

doctor and gets the same information.  This pattern is repeated

time and again in this 109 minute movie, with one third being the same scenes

played at least twice for an audience that "got it" the first time around. 

This is one of those films that is not very good or very bad and inspires the now classic line -

"wait for it to reach television."

The film does have one major quality, there is not even a mention of a zombie or vampire - that is a plus for any film.