While not a horrible remake of the 1951 MGM comedy, it's an unfortunate one, a missed opportunity as it really could have brought some tenderness into a cynical era where only sentiment and sappiness resulted. The premise of the original story is there, although the team has been changed from the Pirates to the Angels.
I didn't expect a masterpiece in this, especially being a Disney film, but the movie seems overwrought with anger through the characters played by Danny Glover and Tony Danza. Glover is the weary team manager and Danza a troubled player with health and substance issues. Ben Johnson is the Angel's owner, distraught over his losing team.
As the youngster who sees angel Christopher Lloyd, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is good as the orphaned boy, foster child of Brenda Fricker. He's always hoping that his absent father will show up to take him home. Milton Davis Jr. Is cuteness personified as Joseph's much younger best friend.
One of the best elements of the original was the fact that you didn't see the angel, just heard of him. Lloyd plays the angel as if he's traveling back from the future, surrounded by silly gimmicks and really cheap looking special effects. This is watchable but terribly derivative, the epitome of paint by numbers movie making that comes when the movie makers thinks that the audiences aren't smart enough to see right through that.
I didn't expect a masterpiece in this, especially being a Disney film, but the movie seems overwrought with anger through the characters played by Danny Glover and Tony Danza. Glover is the weary team manager and Danza a troubled player with health and substance issues. Ben Johnson is the Angel's owner, distraught over his losing team.
As the youngster who sees angel Christopher Lloyd, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is good as the orphaned boy, foster child of Brenda Fricker. He's always hoping that his absent father will show up to take him home. Milton Davis Jr. Is cuteness personified as Joseph's much younger best friend.
One of the best elements of the original was the fact that you didn't see the angel, just heard of him. Lloyd plays the angel as if he's traveling back from the future, surrounded by silly gimmicks and really cheap looking special effects. This is watchable but terribly derivative, the epitome of paint by numbers movie making that comes when the movie makers thinks that the audiences aren't smart enough to see right through that.