The list of great baseball movies is longer than your average Yankees-Red Sox game. Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, Major League, Major League II, Moneyball, For Love of the Game, The Natural, A League of Their Own, The Sandlot, Bad News Bears, The Fan (ok that one was a joke, just making sure you were paying attention) and the list goes on.
The greatest real-life baseball story, Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball, has finally come to the silver screen through 42 as it opened in theaters. The biopic was #1 at the box office this weekend with $27.3 million dollars, besting yet another Scary Movie parody. (Wait a minute, they are STILL making those? I thought the Scary Movie franchise was done after the second one and now I come to discover they've actually made five of them? What a country.)
In addition to being #1, 42 made history as the best opening weekend ever for a baseball movie. The most surprising element in all of this is the movie 42 dispatched at the top of the list – the 2006 comedy The Benchwarmers. I actually had to look this film up on Wikipedia because I have zero memory of this movie ever existing. To my amazement, The Benchwarmers starred David Spade, Rob Schneider, Jon Heder as nerds taking on bullies in baseball games. It also starred Sean Salisbury. If ever there was a movie worthy of a scary movie parody that has to be it! Of all of 42 the movie's accomplishments, supplanting that disaster from the history books may be one of its greatest contributions to society.
To read more on the movie 42, check out this great review from Ian Casselberry of The Outside Corner.
H/T USA Today
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