Movie Review: Little Big League (1994)

The movie stars Luke Edwards, Timothy Busfield, John Ashton, Ashley Crow and Kevin Dunn.

My wife had to work Saturday morning and, since I was home with the kids, I decided to spend a good chunk of the day helping my youngest daughter organize her clothes (it was becoming very difficult to find outfits for her on school mornings). I, however, didn’t want to spend all day in her room so I ended up doing the bulk of the sorting in our living room and, mostly to avoid boredom, watched some movies at the same time. One of the films I ended up watching was a movie I hadn’t seen in a while, “Little Big League.”

Since it had been nearly 20 years since I had last watched this film, I couldn’t remember much about it and, to be perfectly frank, wasn’t really expecting to enjoy watching it all that much. In fact, I even had a couple backup choices planned out because I figured I would end up turning it off after the first few minutes. However, as it turns out, this movie was actually considerably better than I thought it would be.

One of my biggest concerns when watching this movie was I figured it would be just another sports film. While I don’t necessarily hate sports films, I don’t watch them very often because, with the exception of a few cosmetic details, they tend to follow the same plot. What surprised me when watching this film was the fact it was less of a sports movie and more of a movie about growing up too fast.

I probably appreciate this more now that I’m a parent. But, the one thing I really liked about this movie is I could relate to Billy Heywood (Edwards) because, in many ways, he reminded me of my daughters (especially the oldest, who is a year younger than his character). Basically, he (much like my kids) thinks he knows more than the adults do. And, while he technically is right for a while, he quickly learns there’s a lot more to being an adult than he thought there was going to be. This includes taking responsibility for his mistakes, learning the importance of building good relationships and even taking advice from people, including parents, who may not necessarily be smarter than he is but have a lot more experience.

In other words, it’s a movie that shows both sides of the situation in a way that both kids and their parents will enjoy. This, in my opinion at least, is so much better than if it would have just about him being a successful baseball manager/owner at the age of 12 and the emphasis was just on the sports aspect of the movie.

Probably the only thing I would change about this movie would be the ending. I didn’t necessarily hate it. But, mostly based on where they were in the season, it wasn’t too hard to figure out how the final game was going to end and, because of that, the surprise twist at the end really didn’t do much for me because I pretty much guessed at it. However, as I said, I didn’t hate it so I wouldn’t consider it something that ruined an otherwise good movie.

This is actually a pretty decent family film and my only regret, when watching it, was I didn’t have my oldest daughter watch it with me. If you are looking for a movie to watch as part of family time, this is one I would recommend.

My Grade: A