Corn without the Cobb

Field of Dreams (1989)

Rating: PG

Runtime: 106 minutes

Box Office (in today’s dollars): 121 million (approximately)

Characters: Ray Kinsella, Annie Kinsella, Karin Kinsella, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Terence Mann, Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham, John Kinsella, Mark, Dee, Annie’s Mom

Cool Stuff: James Earl Jones’s—I mean Terence Mann’s—speech

Cool Music: The score ... it’s magical and spooky.

Cool Quote: “If you build it, he will come.”

Yay, a sports movie! This and Caddyshack are the only two on my list of elite eighties movies ... and they are complete opposites. This is your classic story of “getting old and hating you dad”. Ray Kinsella hears voices and sees images so he decides to build a baseball field. Everyone thinks he is crazy, except for his cool wife Annie and their daughter Karin. But then the ghosts of Shoeless Joe Jackson and the rest of the Black Sox show up. Side note: I used to have a Black Sox jersey in high school. I wanted a Brooklyn Dodgers jersey, but I couldn’t afford it (I wanted to be like Mookie from Do the Right Thing). Terence Mann is the grumpy old man who secretly loves baseball and The Beatles. He also wrote the greatest novel of his time: “The Boat Rocker”. My favorite character in the movie is Moonlight Graham. He carries an umbrella and used to buy his wife lots of blue hats.

My pick for coolest thing in the movie is Terence Mann’s speech about baseball. When it comes to sports, I love basketball (go Celtics!), hate football (go Buccaneers!), and respect baseball (go Pirates!). It is probably the sport with the best history (my friend Andy would be the expert on the subject). And James Earl Jones’s voice is fantastic. Speaking of fantastic: the score for the movie is perfect. It really makes you feel like you are there in the cornfield amongst the ghosts. There are many great lines from the movie: “Is this heaven? No, it’s Iowa”, “Ease his pain”, “Go the distance”, and “People will come”, but the one everyone loves is “If you build it, he will come.”

Three things I learned while watching this movie: Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were at Fenway Park during the filming of the scenes there, in 1972 all anyone cared about was Richard Nixon and The Godfather, and after winking at someone you should watch out for “in your ear”.

Next movie to review: Batman