When it comes to raising children, there are two hard lessons to learn: you only get one chance to care for someone else’s childhood, and what is a random day for you holds an important memory for a child. Becoming a parent means becoming a keeper of someone else’s joy and pain, in their best days and their worst, while doing what you can to raise and guide a new life. This is what people mean when they talk about the sacrifices they make for their children, because once the child is there, their needs (emotional, psychological, nutritional) take precedence over your own. Sometimes that means making the hard choices between what is comfortable for you and what is harmful for the child. This is only half of the true story that makes up the story of Bobby Ratliff and his sons Robert and John, which forms the basis for the new Ty Roberts series (12 powerful orphans) Movie You have to believein selected cinemas from August 30ththA story of small miracles, You have to believe combines everything that audiences love about baseball with a heartwarming and often hilarious story of underdogs who refuse to give up against all odds, contrasted by a story of loss that touches you whether you are suffering from a terminal illness yourself or not.
Fort Worth, Texas, 2002: Robert Ratliff (Michael Cash) and his Little League teammates finish the season at the bottom of the standings. They are frustrated by their losses but also revel in the fun they had. Meanwhile, their coaches Bobby Ratliff (Luke Wilson) and Jon Kelly (Greg Kinnear) look to the future, where Jon may hand over the leadership baton to Bobby entirely due to the demands of his job as a lawyer. The future holds other plans, however, as Robert’s team is selected for the upcoming Little League tournament and Bobby suddenly becomes ill and is unable to practice at full capacity. With Bobby’s health deteriorating despite treatment, the team decides to use this as a rallying cry and move forward as best they can, with the possibility of moving up from the bottom of Fort Worth’s Little League to the Little League World Series.
With a screenplay by Ty Roberts and Lane Garrison (12 powerful orphans), You have to believe walks a fine line by combining a family story about death and dying with the inspirational aspects of young adult sports films. The smart decision is to narrow the focus so that most of the story is told through the lens of Robert and his teammates. Opting for their perspective allows for moments of lighthearted humor, like trash-talking future opponents on the road or current opponents on the field, and conveys some of that The bears are loose (1976) or The sandbank (1993) Energy (self-addressed by casting SandlotPatrick Renna in a small role as a Fort Worth Little League overseer). This not only gives the story some much-needed levity to counteract the more serious moments, but also provides an excuse for adaptive and creative cinematography, transition techniques that don’t fit a traditional sports drama, and sports-based gimmicks. Just as cinema sometimes takes liberties with reality, You have to believe plays with the truth to remind the audience that the day-to-day is just as important in the grand scheme of things as the big events or gestures, like singing a hype song on the way to winning a championship. Even when there seems to be a lot at stake, kids talking about a game where they’re not the best in their league and it’s literally only going to get better creates opportunities to remind the audience that anything is possible when everything falls away and the most important thing to worry about is the game. Additionally, it brings some normalcy to an otherwise stressful situation, both as baseball players and as 10- to 16-year-old kids. It’s normal for members of the team to be around the age where they’re sexually interested in each other, so it seems natural when a horny guy on the team forgets that if he’s focused on the game, he might actually make a positive impression on his teammate’s sister. It is normal to be happy about the absurd, like a teammate who suddenly can hit better without his glasses. In times of extreme stress, the normal things ground us and, because of their perspective, You have to believe is also grounded, allowing the more sublime moments to emerge without any sugary side effects.
This also enables You have to believe to intervene in the Bobby parts of the narrative without breaking the momentum and vice versa. Robert and his team play baseball because they love the game, and Bobby as their coach creates a two-way connection that allows Bobby to dip in and out of the story. By presenting them as parallel stories, Ty Roberts and Garrison create space for the adult/parent elements without distracting from baseball. This looks like the team decides to use Bobby as a rallying point by writing his name on their caps (child’s perspective), and Bobby has to choose treatment options based on the game plan (adult perspective). After we’ve established that Bobby is a practical father, that he values his kids and their passions, and that he supports them in trying things to their full potential rather than settling for a partial attempt, it’s understandable to see Bobby struggle with the treatment in favor of the games — what will Robert remember more, the treatments or the games? Will he remember his father’s illness or his presence in the stands? Will he fight for his own livelihood in the face of inscrutable odds in a potentially futile attempt to prolong life, or will he put his children and their childhood first? The structure of Ty Roberts and Garrison’s film gives the emotions space to be felt, explored and identified, and the film is always at the service of the characters and their respective struggles.
Even if the audience has an inkling of how things go based on their knowledge of history, there is still plenty to keep them engaged while watching. In fact, it doesn’t matter if you know the outcome because, thanks to the cast’s performances, there is a sense of realism amidst the heightened circumstances that allows the audience to empathize with the story. (You can catch the real-world climax here.) Another clever surprise attack: Just when you think Ty Roberts is about to venture too far into familiar adaptive waters, leading the audience too close to the familiar and invading privacy, the decision is made to offer discretion and enhance the moment rather than use it for cheap emotion. Although there are unexpected surprises inside and outside the film (You have to believe takes its name from the football (not baseball) program that sons Robert and John Ratliff co-founded with Alec Mullarkey in 2007 and is still running), there is nothing so outrageous that one would question the entire narrative, and certainly nothing that makes the narrative within the narrative seem false. Instead, Ty Roberts stages a story that will sound familiar to those familiar with the Bears, the Sandlot kids, and even a certain bad boy from the Main subjects (1989; 1994), which is based on truth, makes this book even more powerful: a truth that childhood is sometimes the greatest gift we can give to others and to ourselves.
In selected cinemas from August 30thth2024.
For more information, visit the official Well Go USA website. You have to believe Website.
Final score: 3.5 out of 5.
Categories: In the cinema, Reviews