The Natural

THE NATURAL is so archetypal that it borders on parody.

The story itself is rather simple: gifted but older man makes good in the world of professional sports, overcoming temptation and injury to step up to the plate for the crucial at-bat in the crucial moment of the crucial game. The magic is in the execution: Which bat does he swing on his way to the top? One he fashioned by hand from the wood of a tree struck by lightning. Who personifies temptation? Kim Basinger as the Call of the Big City. Who personifies redemption? Glenn Close as The Goodness of Rural America.

There's this scene toward the end, in which star Robert Redford tells manager Wilford Brimley that he'll play in the big game regardless of the risk to his health, that encapsulates everything the movie's about. As Redford pokes his head in Brimley's door to deliver the news that he'll play (and, by so doing, save the team, escape the temptations of the flesh and the pocketbook, and generally redeem America), he's backlit with a key light so intense that his blond hair forms a no-kidding halo. This is a movie that knows exactly what it is and exactly what it's about, and it's a movie that's gloriously, ridiculously shameless in the pursuit of those objectives.

This leaves the viewer with two options. One can either laugh with it or laugh at it. I chose to laugh with it, allowing it to take me on its magic carpet ride through the mythic landscape of an impossible America.

And I had a wholesome good time.