“The Hill” has three writers who collectively wrote the sports movie classics “Rudy,” “Hoosiers,” and “When the Game Stands Tall.” It’s the second baseball movie that Dennis Quaid (“The Rookie”) has been in. And flinty ex-Marine Scott Glenn—always good in sports and military stories—brings the flintiness. Meaning, “The Hill” has got to be a good sports movie, right?
Pretty much. Religion and politics don’t (or shouldn’t) mix, but religion and sports is always a match made in movie heaven, especially in America.
Not to mention the fact that “The Hill” chalks up yet another ridiculous Rotten Tomatoes percentage skew: as of this writing, 39 percent critics, 97 percent audience. What’s that tell you? That movie critics don’t like any religion in their movies these days. Well, I’m here to tell ya: I generally swim upstream against the critic current, and I found “The Hill” to be an exceptionally good family movie.
‘The Hill’
“The Hill,” which tells the true-life and very inspirational story of baseball player Rickey Hill, who you’ve probably never heard of because he didn’t play major league baseball, and how he struggled to overcome the degenerative spinal disease he was born with. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable slice of Americana, like a series of Norman Rockwell paintings come to life. Actually, it’s pretty much a baseball version of the 1984 dance movie “Footloose,” with Dennis Quaid in the John Lithgow role of the fire-and-brimstone-preaching pastor.Rickey Hill (played by the very talented child actor Jesse Berry in the earlier scenes) was born with said medical issue in the late ’50s and wore leg braces into his early teens. However, his passion and bliss was swatting stones with sticks, obsessively, until he got his 10,000 skill-set-developing hours under his belt, and then started knocking stones clear across fields, over trees, shattering neighbors’ trucks’ windshields, and became a Texas high school batting phenom.
And so, the preacher preaches faith-in-the-Almighty to his flock, but has, himself, no faith that his son’s dreams (backed by his son’s unshakable faith in the Almighty) can transcend the illusion of this earthly realm. James ruthlessly and painstakingly squelches young Mickey Mantle-obsessed Rickey’s dreams, insisting instead that Ricky follow in his footsteps as a pastor.
When James apprehends Rickey and Rickey’s older brother (Mason Gillett) delighting, as boys will, in baseball cards (Those are heroes! Boys need heroes!), he confiscates the contraband in the name of purging such items that “sell the worship of false idols.” This bit of drama creates a nice dissonance and tension for the audience to root for Rickey.
They also probably don’t appreciate the fact that little Rickey demonstrates God’s plan to his father by drawing a diagram of a baseball diamond. What happens if you draw a line from home plate to second base, and another line going from first base to third? Whatdya get? You know. Rickey draws this diagram in the dirt whenever he steps up to bat, and whether critics like that or not, here’s an irrefutable fact: It appears to have worked for Rickey like gangbusters.
Despite the father-son tension, “The Hill” has lots of warmth. It’s a heartwarming tale of exceptional forbearance. It also includes lighthearted humor, such as when the family jalopy runs out of gas (after the pastor has been run out of town by his last congregation, who resents him for excoriating them about smoking and spitting tobacco on the floor of God’s house).
The pastor gets out of the decrepit car to tearfully pray. Bang! The car promptly breaks down, hissing smoke. And when the pastor is ready to pull his hair out—bang!—a thunderstorm crashes down on his head. It’s such an over-the-top message from the Almighty that the Hill clan can’t help but bust out laughing and enjoy the rain.
Against All Odds
Naturally, Rickey’s family can’t afford the operation, and the entire town raises the necessary funds. The surgery barely leaves Rickey enough time to recover for a big-league tryout supervised by legendary baseball scout Red Murff (Scott Glenn, here reuniting with Quaid 40 years after “The Right Stuff”). Rickey’s grandmother (Bonnie Bedelia) assures him, from her deathbed, that she’ll be watching when he plays.“The Hill” is probably too long, but that clearly hasn’t bothered audiences. Didn’t bother me either—the old-school Americana of small-town USA denizens rooting for each other is always a breath of fresh air.
The casting of the kids as adults, even the lead, feels like it was a bit rushed. Had they absolutely nailed the casting, the magic that’s mostly in the beginning of the film would have carried over into the latter half, and “The Hill” would have been an instantaneous baseball-movie classic. However, Rickey’s forbearance and stubbornness, born from some inborn certainty, is what carries the film throughout (even in the older Rickey’s performance) and is why, I’m guessing, audiences appreciate it so much.
