Why so much hype?

As Good As It Gets

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

After seeing THE SCOUT again on TV, I've come to accept that the main problem with the film is that it's actually two completely different films smashed together. On the one hand you've got the comedy surrounding Albert Brooks and his hunt for that one baseball player who will save his scouting career. As one of our great comic screen writers, Brooks delivers some witty lines now and then, particularly in the first part of the film. However, the second film is a half-written drama dealing with the emotional/mental problems of Steve Nebraska, Brendan Frasier's character. There's next to know explanation and/or resolution to his emotional storyline, and although the wonderful Diane Wiest as his psychiatrist is on the team, she barely makes it to the warm-up spot and pretty much fades out without much ado. Screenwriter Brooks keeps tossing tantalizing hints into Frasier's emotional mix - the laundry concerns, for example -- but then does nothing with them. By the last inning, THE SCOUT can't decide whether it's FEAR STRIKES OUT or MAJOR LEAGUE.

The acting wasn't bad but they completely butchered any semblance of reality with regards to baseball. Let's just recap all that was wrong just with the "final game" (Game 1 of the World Series)1) A player can't make his first appearance in the World Series--he'd have to be on roster before then 2) Since Steve Nebraska was playing in Yankee stadium, the DH rule was in effect. Meaning he couldn't have batted. 3) In order for Nebraska to have used his 81st pitch to strike out Ozzie Smith, that means that the Cardinals put "The Wizard" batting 9th in the order. Yeah, right. 4) Before the game, Costas makes some comment about how "many are predicting a perfect game from Steve Nebraska". Seeing as how there have only been 17 perfect games in history, one would highly doubt a 1st ever start would be a perfect game. 5) 81 strikes in a row...nobody even hit a ball? A World Series caliber team can't ONCE key in to a 110 mile per hour fastball to make even accidental contact once?Most idiotic movie regarding baseball of all time.

It seemed like baseball fantasies in the mid 90's were a very popular type style.This time It's about a pitcher steve nebraska who is in mexico and a scout albert brooks finds him.From then on he lives in new york city gets paid millions,and plays for the yankees.The relationship between brooks and fraser is like a father and son relationship,but in some scenes fraser has serious mental problems.

The Scout is one of those sports movies that gets it right in enough ways to make it watchable, but gets it wrong enough to make you cringe in more spots than you'd like. Brendan Fraser is really terrific as the dopey, wide-eyed innocent of a pitcher who becomes the subject of a massive game of tug of war at first between teams to see who signs him, and then between his love of baseball and his fear of failure. His career has flourished thanks to roles like this, the downy innocent amid a swamp of leaches. This part of the movie is really good. The huge, over-exaggerated bidding war between baseball clubs for his service, it all is real enough to be familiar, and satirical enough to really make fun of and kind of predict baseball's current situation, in which money has become more and more the driving force behind the game. The movie also has a bevvie of terrific cameos like Bret Saberhagen, Keith Hernandez, who oddly seem mistcast as Mets stars in a movie that circles around the Yankees, and of course, a small but prominant role for Yankee owner George Steinbrenner. But in the end all of this winds into a ridiculous debut outing in the first game of the World Series. Let's start with the fact that you can't just join the roster in the World Series. It doesn't work that way. No matter how touted you are, no team will carry a pitcher on their post-season roster (and no, if you're not on that roster the whole way, you cannot join it) who won't pitch unless you get the Series. It doesn't work that way. And his 81 pitch, 81 strike perfect game is ludicrous. I mean completely preposterous. This is a movie that gets so much right in its satire of the game's economics (the Yankees winning the bidding war here is a nice little nod to the current situation where the Yankees are hated throughout the baseball world for their tossing around of money as if it were the fake paper stuff you get with a Monopoly board) and gets so much wrong in the baseball sense. In how good Steve Nebraska (Fraser) is, all sense of realism is throw horribly out the window, and the movie becomes little more than a silly baseball movie. As a Yankee fan, and a fan of the game itself, i expect better of a baseball movie.