61*

source: 61*

As others who have posted comments about "61*", I too am not a Yankee fan. I read a book several years ago called "Dynasty - When Rooting For The Yankess Was Like Rooting for US Steel". It was a great book, but didn't exactly leave you with a warm and fuzzy feeling about the team from the Bronx. Billy Crystal's movie, however, left me blinking back tears. It is nothing less than a love story to two men and a team that is truly legendary in a sport where the term "legend" is too easily used. And he showed Maris and Mantle as real people, warts and all. Barry Pepper and Thomas Jane were brilliant as the M&M Boys and Billy Crystal takes us back in time by giving attention to the tiniest detail. An aging Tiger Stadium was magically transformed into "The House That Ruth Built", monuments and all. I grew up rooting for the Cleveland Indians, not an easy task. Back then, as now, the Yankees were our hated rivals, but even so there wasn't a kid I knew who wouldn't have given everything to be Micky Mantle. Despite his greatness playing for a team that could beat my local heroes more often than not, The Mick was one of those greats that just transcended partisan sports. It was easy to see why nearly everyone was rooting for him to break the Babe's record, and not Roger Maris. Billy Crystal, truly one who worshiped Mantle, makes Maris's ordeal seem almost mythic, but from all I have read, he exaggerated very little. "61*" is possibly the greatest baseball movie ever made, and that's saying something. Watch it and relive what may be baseball's greatest season.

Baseball is a great sport, but an horrible subject for movies. Except perhaps for EIGHT MEN OUT, or films where the sport is not the principal subject, like COBB, FIELDS OF DREAM, FEAR STRIKES OUT or BULL DURHAM, a comedy. Every time someone tries to make a serious film about baseball, it always fail. Billy Crystal offers us nothing original. His film is full of clichés : abusive slow motions (on the crucial moments, of course) stupid special effect when we see the ball coming right to us, horrible heavy orchestral muzak (on the crucial moments, of course). But the two young actors, Pepper & Jane, are doin' a very fine job. Also, Crystal offers us a good early sixties set. Hey! How about a movie about Barry Bonds breaking McGwire record ? And, in a few years, how about a film about Vladimir Guerrero breaking Bonds record ? I hope that some day Spike Lee will make his movie about Jackie Robinson. That will be the best serious baseball movie of all time.

This is a wonderful piece of work from director and executive producer Billy Crystal. A powerful and personal story of the little known amiable relationship between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle during that dramatic home run race of 1961. The two sluggers were always pictured as being bitter rivals. This is a whole different tale. Mantle(Thomas Jane)being the Yankees 'golden boy' and Maris(Barry Pepper)the ridiculed interloper learned to coexist and become the M & M Boys. Mantle being jaded by the press offered his best advice to the often stoic and sullen Maris on matters of surviving publicity. Most of the home run chase was like a masterpiece on canvas. Maris never seemed to get the respect he deserved, but his fortitude garnered him a place in baseball history. 61* would of course become 61 and then later shattered and surpassed by another home run chase. This movie deserves being ranked among the elite of sports movies and one of the best baseball flicks ever. Pepper is outstanding as Maris. Jane takes a little warming up to as the Mick. A very talented supporting cast includes: Richard Masur, Bruce McGill & Christopher Bauer. Plus most impressive is Billy Crystal's daughter, Jennifer, playing Pat Maris. This is a must see for every sports fan!

Billy Crystal hits it out of the park with 61*. Brilliantly cast, beautifully shot and at times brutally honest in its storytelling, 61* is an absolute gem. Any baseball fan well knows the story of the great home run chase of 1961. Here, Crystal peels back the curtain and brings us up close and personal with the men who made that season so memorable. In Barry Pepper, who plays Roger Maris, and Thomas Jane, as Mickey Mantle, Crystal found two actors absolutely perfect for their respective roles. The way Pepper and Jane perfectly captured the essence of these real-life heroes goes far beyond the eerie physical resemblances the actors have to the men they portray. Maris was a quiet, serious, introspective family man. And during this particular season it could be said he was a downright tortured man as well. Pepper captures all of this wonderfully. Mantle on he other hand was an outgoing, energetic, fun-loving superstar who took full advantage of all the perks his stardom brought him. And Jane does a fine job bringing this out and really lets you see the wear and tear Mantle's lifestyle had on him as his body began to break down. It would have been easy to gloss over some of the less appealing aspects of Mantle's personality. It also would have been dishonest and Crystal is to be applauded for showing it how it really was. Mantle was a larger than life hero but he certainly had his faults and this film brings them out. Some may find the pervasive profanity and crude sexual humor in the film to be a bit over the top but an honest retelling of the story requires acknowledging the way these ballplayers really were. 61* is not just a movie about baseball, it is at its heart a movie about Roger Maris and the key relationships in his life. Maris and Mantle, Maris and his wife, Maris and the oppressive press...these relationships are all explored as we learn much more about Roger Maris the man than Roger Maris the baseball player. Maris had to overcome a great deal to accomplish what he did and this film does a brilliant job of bringing us along on his magical ride.

I didn't really like this movie very much. It was competent, the acting was fine, the scenes were technically OK, but it just didn't inspire me. I guess the others on this board have a different opinion. I don't say this because I'm a Red Sox fan and don't like the Yankees (although, that is in fact true), because I've liked other Yankee related films before (Pride of the Yankees, for example). It just didn't grab me. It seemed that Billy Crystal was so desperate to make a movie that honors his baseball heroes that he forgot he was also supposed to be making an entertaining film. The fact that the title itself is based on a historical inaccuracy didn't help. The commissioner never said anything about an asterix, and it didn't help that the film portrayed him as a one dimensional asshole.

Billy Crystal can be accused of presenting a heavily biased view of the Yankee summer of 1961, and his accusers would be right. Biased on the side of the truth, biased on the side of fairness to the characters, and biased on the side of historical integrity, "61" tells the story of one of the greatest seasons of all time for the New York Yankees--with admiration, with respect, and, above all, with a keen eye for how it really came down. If you didn't witness first-hand the character assassination that plagued Roger Maris in his pursuit of Babe Ruth's home run record, "61" holds no resonance for you. You can't possibly understand what Maris went through that year just because his prowess for hitting home runs blossomed at record-breaking speed. You can't sympathize with him or the way he acted either. The more homers he hit, the more he was pursued, and the more he retreated. When Mickey Mantle tells Roger that he's the one making it hard on himself in his dealings with reporters--"I told you how to handle those guys. You don't want to listen."--it reveals the core of Maris' struggle with the press. Roger Maris was not a media darling--he shied away from the spotlight and he tried to protect himself and his family from the media circus that the 1961 season became for him. It was no contest, but he continued to fight for his privacy. He was just a guy doing his job and he wanted his privacy respected. It didn't help that he was threatening the greatest sports record of all time achieved by one of the most beloved sports figures in New York or anywhere. It didn't help that he was competing against another beloved and accomplished New York hero to break that record. This hick from North Dakota. What nerve. "Mickey should be the one to do it. He's a real Yankee." Many Yankee fans and baseball fanatics everywhere felt that way in the summer of 1961. Maris didn't deserve to be vilified because he wasn't the "proper" Yankee to break this record. By now you must have surmised that I rooted for Roger Maris in the summer of 1961. That notwithstanding, all of what you see in "61" is true. There's no poetic license taken, no stretching of the truth for dramatic effect, no embellishments to make it a more interesting story (see "It Could Happen to You" and "Under the Tuscan Sun" for that). We can never know how close the relationship was between Mantle and Maris, but I trust Billy Crystal to have done his homework in his depiction of them as very good friends, not bitter rivals, as fabricated by the press. I trust Billy Crystal to have done his homework about every situation, every relationship, every line, and every detail in this movie. You can see that it was a labor of love for him. I thank him for setting the record straight where Roger Maris is concerned because it was about time. If this movie doesn't pull at your heartstrings for any reason, then consider the irony of having gone through all that Maris did to break this record and have it noted in the record book that he did it in a longer season and the final irony of having that decision reversed after his death. "Roger Maris died 6 years earlier, never knowing that the record belonged to him." Maris died of cancer at the very young age of 51. He didn't deserve that either.

In the pantheon of baseball movies, this one, 61*, is in my personal top five, and perhaps the top three. Billy Crystal, better known as a comedian or as host of the Academy Awards, took the director's chair for this film, and produced a story that was a grand insight into the personal and professional world of baseball during the era of Mantle and Maris. Produced very shortly after Mark McGwire broke the Maris record, Crystal framed the 1961 story with scenes from the McGwire run. Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in the 1927 season, and Yankee stadium was still known, a generation later, as the house that Ruth built. In 1961, Ruth's longstanding record seemed secure. Mickey Mantle had inherited the status of 'Yankee favourite' from predecessors Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, but Roger Maris had narrowly beat him in the poll for MVP the previous year, all the more remarkable because Maris was a newcomer from the midwest. The sportwriters were divided in how they reported about the team, but almost all were more focused upon Mantle until the runs began to stack up. However, the press (and often, it seemed, the fans) were still favouring Mantle, and sometimes booed Maris when he would hit a home run. Crystal did a good job at showing the kind of personal stresses, both family and professional, that Mantle and Maris had to endure going through what should have been one of the most glorious seasons in baseball history. There was a kind of institutional resistance to anyone breaking Ruth's record, but even more resistance to Maris than to Mantle. This is embodied in the asterisk that followed the number 61 in record books (and the title of this film) - Ruth's season was several games shorter, and it was deemed 'unfair' for Maris to take the record, having not hit the same number of runs in the same number of games. Eventually the asterisk would be removed, but not before Maris' death some time later. Good little touches like Maris' special eggs (which Mantle began to eat with reluctance, but came around when Maris said he hit home runs after eating them), scrap book collections shown periodically throughout the film, the song 'I love Mickey', and other audio-visual pieces of baseball memorabilia make this a baseball trivia-buff treat. The personal stories of the family lives, increasingly under stress as both players come within striking distance of the record, show details most likely fictional, but certainly understandable. Barry Pepper and Thomas Jane star as Maris and Mantle, respectively, and both turn in great performances as the athletes. They both look like naturals on the field and in the locker room, and do a good job with the personal angle as well, Pepper playing the low-key Maris and Jane playing the hard-living Mantle. They both bear striking resemblance to the men they portray, Pepper especially so. Other performers include Anthony Michael Hall, Richard Masur, and Christopher McDonald in memorable supporting roles. Donald Moffat as the commissioner Frick is especially good. Jennifer Foley (actually, Jennifer Crystal Foley, Billy Crystal's daughter) turns in a good performance as Pat Maris, the long-suffering and supportive wife, struggling from half a country away to be strong for her husband as he faces the stress of success. Any baseball fan will love this film. Those who aren't necessarily fans of baseball may find a new-found passion for the game. The Yankee's retired Maris' number 9 in 1984. Maris' bat is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Perhaps some day, Maris will be, too.

Billy Crystal has copied all of the worst features of movies, such as "A League of Their Own," that let sentimentality overwhelm what might have been an interesting story in someone else's hands. The gloppy music, the flashbacks, the cardboard characters all make this movie a waste of two hours and ten minutes. The use of slow motion at the end was painful and those closing notes were trite. Has there ever been a good baseball movie? "A League of Their Own" was entertaining, but sticky sweet. "Bang The Drum Slowly" didn't quite measure up to the book. "Field of Dreams" was manipulative and corny [no pun intended]. And that's not even counting monstrosities like "The Babe Ruth Story" or Ronald Reagan as Grover Cleveland Alexander. I haven't seen the Hank Greenberg documentary, but it appears to me that there simply is not enough in the game to make a decent drama out of. Ken Burns' nine-part documentary proves the point.

blah....sorry but I can't jump on the Billy Crystal Bandwagon and tell everyone how great this movie was, because it wasn't really that good. Please someone find actors who can throw baseballs...I am sick and tired of watching these types of baseball movies. At least when Kevin Costner throws a baseball he looks like a ball player. But oh well maybe my expectations were too high from seeing all these great reviews. City Slickers 3* anyone...anyone...anyone?