After seeing the trailer, I assumed that Wreck-It Ralph would be a feature-length nostalgia-fest for '80s kids, what with the 8-bit game the titular character hails from and the cameos from Pac-Man ghosts and the like. So when I actually saw the movie, I was not just pleasantly surprised to be wrong, but thrilled to have seen such a sweet, charming, genuinely funny story that I really hope joins the pantheon of classic Disney films.
[Editor's note: Grantland pal and eminent Hollywood fist-shaker-atter Richard Rushfield is subbing for Dan Silver, who is on vacation.]
Richard Rushfield: Judging from this glimpse, Trouble With the Curve is a one-film compilation of Clint Eastwood’s greatest hits. It’s got the team of old guys getting back on the field (Space Cowboys) ... a grizzled old-timer taking some girl under his wing (Million Dollar Baby) ... and an attempt to recapture the magic of “Get off my lawn!" with a brand-new cranky catch phrase: “Gimme a damn check!” The Clint nostalgia is appropriate since the film’s first-time director, Robert Lorenz, is a veteran of Eastwood’s crews, having served as his AD and second unit director. Ordinarily anytime Clint Eastwood wants to cuss out living room furniture, you can sign me up for a seat opening weekend. But there’s a couple of huge, neon flashing warning lights in this trailer. First: the casting of Justin Timberlake as what seems to be a regular guy in flannel hanging around the honky-tonks looks like the greatest casting misjudgment since Denise Richards played a nuclear physicist. Second, while the trailer gets points for being the first of surely thousands to use Idol champion Phillip Phillips’s victory song “Home,” not since the heyday of Peter Gabriel has a magical la-la-la chorus signaled such molasses-thick treacle in a film.
