Friday, August 24, 2001

Movie review
‘Summer Catch’ slides into second base at best
by Constance Beaman
skiff staff

Summer Catch
Warner Bros.

As end of summer films go, “Summer Catch” gets to second base at best.

This summer fling flick stars Freddie Prinze, Jr. as a lawn-mowing baseball player named Ryan with aspirations of going pro. His hometown in Cape Cod, Mass. hosts the annual summer baseball league that welcomes the best college baseball players from all over the United States.

Ryan’s commitment to baseball and his new love affair with a girl who summers in his town begin to clash, and he has to decide between romance and baseball. This film’s only attempts at art include a few daydream sequences in fuzzy black and white and dramatic bulb flashes that transform a daytime baseball field into a fully lighted nighttime field.

Prinze is so wholesome that director Mike Tollin had to throw in boisterous Matthew Lillard to liven things up. His bad boy character Bru lends the movie its only foul language and ridicule. Without him the films PG-13 rating would have simply been G. We can only hope that the upcoming “Scooby Doo” live action adaptation that stars both Prinze and Lillard will have a screenwriter more apt at movie making.

If you liked “10 Things I Hate About You” or “The Princess Diaries,” this is your kind of film. Cheers for Prinze in a thong; jeers for Lillard in a thong. Study harder Mike Tollin.

This is not a good directing debut, so you get a C.