Million Dollar Arm Film Analysis

Million Dollar Arm is the kind of sports movie that crams everything subject-specific into quick-cut montages to make room for maudlin drama and fish-out-of-water comedy—a baseball flick where no one is actually shown playing baseball. It offers plenty of sideline pleasures—like seeing Jon Hamm do his disaffected Don Draper stare while watching Susan Boyle’s performance on Britain’s Got Talent—and a gaping hole in its center. Into this hole it tosses redemption arcs, romantic comedy cutesiness, business rivalry subplots—anything, as long as it isn’t directly related to sports.

Hamm’s character, J.B. Bernstein, is a real person, and the plot of Million Dollar Arm—which is based on Bernstein’s involvement with a reality TV competition in India