Field of Dreams

I suspected that when I watched this film on television with my relatives a month ago, all the really good parts had been excised to make it fit the time slot. James Earl Jones' speech about baseball at the end is missing, as well as several of the in-the-Volkswagen-bus discussions (leaving you wondering what the real problem was with Kevin Costner's character and his estranged, now deceased, dad). They left in all of Amy Madigan's scenes, as Costner's hip and spunky wife, which is the only part of the movie I take umbrage at. You'd think I'd be thrilled by a fully-fleshed out female role, but she unfortunately distracts from the best acting Costner's ever achieved. In the (way too long) documentary accompanying the film on DVD, he explains (with the egotism he's so famous for) that people assume he's a natural at what he does, while in fact he works very hard at making everything look natural. Well, whatever he did here, it worked. He's acting the "normal" guy, one who would never hear voices and believe them, and it helps us as viewers believe the story -- a man is told to build a baseball field in the middle of his corn, which leads him everywhere in search of the reasons for having done it. But the film isn't really about baseball or farming, it's about following your dreams (no matter how out there they may be). It's kinda sappy, and the last shot will bring a lump to the throat of the most curmudgeonly, but it works hard for that sappiness and it pulls it off.

year: 1989
length: 107 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097351/combined