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The Trouble with the Curve | 2012 | PG-13 | - 4.5.5

An aging baseball recruiter with failing eyesight (Clint Eastwood) reluctantly accepts help from his daughter (Amy Adams). His boss at the Atlanta Braves (John Goodman) gives him one last chance to recruit some good players but he has a hard time, even with his daughter's help. Also with Justin Timberlake, Matthew Lillard and Scott Eastwood. Directed by Robert Lorenz. [2:00]

SEX/NUDITY 4 - In a nighttime scene at a lake, a man strips to his bike shorts and jumps in the water: we see his bare chest, back, arms and legs while his female friend removes her jeans but keeps her T-shirt on; we see the back of her panties and legs as she jumps in and they swim close together and kiss as the scene ends and sex is implied.
 A couple kisses passionately in two scenes. As a baseball player signs autographs, a high school girl kisses him on the cheek. A woman will not let a man kiss her and he says he will wait as long as it takes; she smiles.
 A woman wears a skirt with a slit at the back that opens as she walks to show the back of her knees and a man looks at her walking and says, "Wow!" Several girls at a baseball game wear short skirts that reveal most of their legs. A woman wears a scoop-necked top that reveals cleavage and tight jeans that cling to her legs.
 A high school baseball player repeats a dozen times that he will have sex with women (using crude terms) multiple times after he is recruited by the major leagues. A man suggests to a male coworker that an older man at work has a "young babe" for a girlfriend and is surprised the older man can still get an erection; the other man says, "That's his daughter" and the first man looks embarrassed. At a high school baseball game, a player in the dugout shouts at the pitcher to stop eating grease and the pitcher responds by shouting, "Last night I used grease on your mother!" At a ball game, an older man's friends look at him as he arrives and he says, "What are you starin' at; I'm not a pole dancer!" A man asks his female friend on a sidewalk beside a guitarist to dance by saying, "Make a move on me" and they dance briefly.

VIOLENCE/GORE 5 - In a flashback, we see an elderly man in a barn defending a little girl from a stranger touching her arm, by beating a man with punches and kicks until the man's face is bloody; the older man then chokes the other man until he's unconscious. In a bar, an elderly man rushes toward a younger man that the older man's daughter has told to leave her alone; the older man breaks the neck off a beer bottle and holds it to the other man's throat and shouts, "I'll cut your [expletive deleted] face off!" until another man pulls the older man off, tells the younger man that he'd better leave and the older man says, "Get out of here before you give me a heart attack." At a pool table in a bar, a woman tells a man to leave her alone as she snaps the end of a pool cue into his crotch to make the point; he looks surprised but uninjured.
 An ophthalmologist looks into an older man's eye with a flashlight and says there are signs of macular degeneration and glaucoma, but the older man leaves the office, stating he has no time for treatment; later, we see blurry scenes as if through the elderly man's eyes and he falls on bleachers, but is unharmed. An older man with vision problems hits the sides of his garage five times while backing his car out, squealing the tires to a stop. An elderly man stumbles over chairs, curses and kicks a coffee table across the room and out of his way; we see other broken furniture in corners.
 At an intersection, an older man with vision problems is sideswiped by a van; the camera cuts to a hospital treatment room where a doctor places a small bandage on a cut on the old man's forehead and we see a little blood. An elderly man awakens from a nightmare in which he sees a black horse charging him. A baseball player nearly gets hit in the groin with a baseball pitched at him, jumping back just in time.
 A high school baseball player is consistently rude and threatening to workers in the bleachers and concessions, calling them names like "Peanut Boy" and refusing to pay for food. An overweight pitcher high school baseball player shouts at another player and threatens to beat the second boy for calling him "Bacon Boy."
 A man burns a hamburger in his kitchen and his house fills with smoke until his adult daughter rushes into the house and helps clear the smoke; she says she will fix dinner, but an argument ensues about who will do what and she leaves. A friend goes to an elderly man's house and asks about the mess (furniture toppled over, smoke, etc.) and the older man says it's "Feng Shui" décor; the two men have a brief argument over the older man's vision problems and retirement options. Throughout the film, an adult daughter and her elderly father argue about their careers, health and what might be best for either of them at their stages of life; the daughter often cries and leaves the room. An older man and his bosses at a baseball club argue about whether computers are useful in scouting high school ball players for the major leagues; the older man refuses to use a computer, cursing about the uselessness of technology. A man in a car in a parking lot and a woman argue about him losing his job and he drives away erratically as she stands in the lot. An elderly man in a diner pounds his table angrily with his fist, because no one will bring him his bill.
 We hear that a baseball player was arrested for assault and suspended from a team. We hear that another baseball player tore his rotator cuff and can no longer pitch, because the ball club pushed his development too fast. An elderly man tells his daughter that the police never came to arrest him one night after he beat a man, but that he cannot forget the incident.
 In his bathroom with his back to the camera, an elderly man talks to his bladder, coaxing a stream of urine, which we hear.

LANGUAGE 5 - About 2 F-words or derivatives (1 said by a high school boy, but not fully enunciated), 14 scatological terms, 12 anatomical terms, 30 mild obscenities, name-calling (idiot, voodoo, A-Rod, Peanut Boy, Bacon Boy, stinkerball, retarded, losers, mule, monster, Dr. Phil, bootlicker, back stabber, cold blooded, coward, washed up, old man), 16 stereotypical references to women, men, senior citizens, fat people, high school boys, Hispanics, Blacks, the computer illiterate, computer geeks, doctors, lawyers), 14 religious profanities, 8 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - A man at a ballgame drinks beer in a translucent cup as he stands to yell at the players, a man drinks beer while talking to a headstone at a cemetery and pours some beer into a glass sitting at the foot of the grave, men and woman drink beer from large glasses and beer bottles at a bar, a man and a woman play a drinking game and consume shots of whiskey (they do not appear to become drunk), a man quips to a woman that, "You're trying to get me drunk," a man tells a male friend that he does not want to drink "little umbrella drinks" or retire and the friend says he will buy the first man a drink he will like, we see men and women drink wine in two restaurant scenes and one home scene, a woman drinks from a whiskey bottle and passes it to a man who also drinks from it, and a man sits alone with a martini at a hotel bar. A man smokes five cigars in separate indoor and outdoor scenes, and a man smokes a cigarette outdoors once.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Aging, blindness, negative attitudes toward senior citizens, healthcare, accepting help, relationships, family, loyalty, work ethic, determination, overcoming obstacles, honesty, manners, objectifying women.

MESSAGE - Listen to experience and do the work that makes you happy.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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