The Final Season

Starring: Sean Astin, Powers Boothe, & Rachel Leigh Cook

Rating: 1 1/2 out of 5 stars

A baseball movie, based on a true story, Directed by the same guy who brought the Sandlot to life on the big screen, who could ask for more? Norway, Iowa, one of the smallest towns in the mid-west, with a fabled sports history. Their High School baseball team is one of the most successful high school baseball teams of all-time, and their coach, Jim Van Scoyoc (Powers Boothe), is a legend, who could be coaching in the Major Leagues if he wanted to. Small towns like Norway always have their fair share of problems, mainly money, and with this town near bankruptcy, they've agreed to merge with a larger town, which means only one last season of baseball in Norway, and without the expensive contract of coach Van Scoyoc. The coach eventually convinces his former assistant, Kent Stock (Sean Astin), to take over the team, and attempt to lead them to one last championship, but with the town about to disappear from the map, how will he motivate the players or the town to care? This is one of those stories that is as inspirational as it gets, and it should have been a fantastic movie, but it was not. I have never in my life seen a movie centered around a sport, that moves as slowly as this film does. The Final Season is full of heart to heart chats, court fights about the town, and of course Sean Astin's character. I enjoy Sean Astin, after all he is the star of my all-time favorite movie, but his character is this introvert, who is in way over his head to begin with, not to mention the fact that he's replacing this living legend. Astin or rather Astin portraying Stock was just boring, just once I would have liked to see the guy, explode, show some fire, be a real coach, because it was like watching a math teacher, coach a bunch of kids, that didn't really want to be there for much of the film. The Final Season is a great true story, but as a film, it's more talk than anything else, and fails to even come close to expectations.