In Disney’s latest, Hamm plays J.B. Bernstein, an American baseball agent whose career has been overshadowed by local competitors. As things look as bad as they can get, J.B. gets an idea from watching Cricket. He travels to India to find 2 cricket players who could become Baseball players, with the help of sports scout Ray Poitevint (Alan Arkin). Holding trials, J.B. recruits Rinku Singh (Suraj Sharma, from Life of Pi) and Dinesh Patel (Madhur Mittal) and brings them back to the U.S. to train with Baseball coach Tom House (Bill Paxton). The boys adapt to an American lifestyle, whilst J.B. shapes his own life, including a relationship with neighbour Brenda (Lake Hall).
It’s almost quite similar to 2011’s Moneyball. Based on a true story, about an important man in Baseball going to lengths to bring success to the sport and being inspirational in the process. However, I can’t quite see this one being up for Oscars. They might both be Dramas, but the trailer for this is indeed rather cheesy, and the cliché sports movie trailer showing a man struggling with both his career and love life, all accompanied by an inspirational song (In this case, Hall of Fame by The Script) to warm the hearts of audiences and make them want to see if this man can achieve what he’s after (And seeing as it’s a Disney film, he probably will). You can seriously tell the Disney influence on this film. So whilst it has all the qualifications for an Oscar bait movie, I can’t see it being as successful.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t be worth a watch, as it looks like it could be nice, touching way to kill a few hours. Million Dollar Arm is released in May 2014.