Major League: Back to the Minors (1998)

Good movie but grossly overrated

A lot of fun.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Gus Cantrell is a major league pitcher in the twilight of his career. He contacted by Roger Dorn, General Manager of the Minnesota Twins, and offered the role of managing the Buzz, the Twins' AAA team. Cantrell accepts but regrets it almost immediately. The Buzz is a dysfunctional no-hoper team, with an odd assortment of characters. However, Cantrell quickly sets about forging them into a winning team.My expectations for this, the third installment of Major League, were quite low. The first Major League was great but Major League II was very disappointing, filled with clichés, cheap humour and unrealistic baseball. Back to the Minors initially promised to be more of the same, looking quite unoriginal and predictable. However, it grows on you and its charms become more apparent with time. The key is that it is set in the Minor Leagues, so instead of the glamour of major league baseball, we have no-frills, small town, salt-of-the-earth baseball. It makes a refreshing change and does help the engagement factor.This all said, it is still fairly predictable and the humour hit- and-miss, but the baseball is fairly realistic, certainly more realistic than Major League II.Overall, okay, not brilliant, but better than Major League II, at least.

Major League 3: Back to the Minors (1998): Dir: John Warren / Cast: Scott Bakula, Corbin Bernsen, Ted McGinley, Jensen Daggett, Bob Uecker: Comedy about starting over, which should have been done with the first draft of the screenplay. It continues the ever declining baseball storyline that was old in the 1920's. A down and out coach will train a bunch of hopeless yuppies that will defeat the rival team so that everybody will respect them for giving it all in one of the worst films of the year. Throw in a little voodoo and a bunch of misfits who draw attention to themselves by simply being morons and you have this film in a nutshell. Director John Warren is labouring under leftovers and not a shred of originality to be found. Scott Bakula plays the struggling coach who will bring the team to the championship thus making everybody proud save for the audience. Others whom were led into believing that this was a career high point are Corbin Bernsen, Ted McGinley and Jensen Daggett who will no doubt be recommended to leave this off their resumes. Bob Uecker pops in as a sports reference and had Andre the Giant been alive, he may have choked out Uecker a second time for this. This is among the worst of its kind but that list is also very long. It is riding on the success of the previous two films and it strikes out within the first ten minutes. That is, if you happen to stay awake that long. Score: 1 / 10

in my opinion this is the best of the trilogy.i laughed out loud a few times in this one.but more than that,i just thought the story was better.there were some great lines delivered in this one,many courtesy of Bob Uecker,who played Harry Doyle,the goof ball play by play man.again there are some oddball characters with some strange rituals.i also thought the movie flowed more smoothly and it was better paced.there was also a love interest for one of the characters in this one,although admit it wasn't a substantial part of the movie.but at least there was one.as far as i can recall,there was no love interest of any consequence in the previous two.if i'm wrong,please tell me so.anyway,overall a pretty good movie.for me,"Major League 3:Back to the Minors" is a 7/10

I've never seen the first two "Major League" movies, and I have no interest in seeing them. Also, I'm not the biggest fan of Scott Bakula. So why did I watch "Major League: Back to the Minors"? Why did I go so far as to BUY it?! Because of an actor named Walton Goggins, that's why. Familiar to most people as Shane on 'The Shield', Goggins appears here as an arrogant baseball player named Billy 'Downtown' Anderson who proves to be the true talent in his minor-league team (the Buzz). Bakula stars as the coach of said team (downgraded from the major leagues). Also appearing (although I wasn't familiar with him at the time I purchased this) is Kenny Johnson (Goggins's co-star on 'The Shield' and former real-life housemate). Johnson portrays, rather hilariously, a team member named Lance "The Dance", who uses his former ballet skills to help him play ball.Other team members include a pair of twins with the same first name, a guru-type guy who wears a black hood, a surfer dude, and a geek named Doc who looks quite a bit older than most of his teammates. They're misfits, to be sure, but they have heart and spirit and all that good stuff, and throughout the film it's up to Bakula's Gus Cantrell to put these things to good use. Will he? I'll just say "guess" (and something tells me your answer will be correct)."Major League: Back to the Minors" doesn't quite make it up to hilariously bad caliber; however, it does manage to pass the time. I was quite amused by Johnson, and snickered at silly aspects like subtitles when a foreign man was speaking perfectly understandable English. I would like to have seen more of Goggins, but his few scenes with Bakula are genuinely good for a movie such as this. (However, Bakula's character tended to annoy in his other scenes, particularly by making dumb statements like the one about his "large white buttox." I also didn't care for the scenes where his tertiary Love Interest tried -- and failed -- to have a personality.)All in all, worth a look if you're a Bakula fan, or a fan of 'The Shield', or just a "Major League" completist.