Million Dollar Arm review

Despite the off-piste indie pasts of writer Thomas McCarthy ( The Visitor ) and director Craig Gillespie ( Lars And The Real Girl ), Disney’s based-on-true-life sports pic never dodges genre cliché. Take Jon Hamm’s cynical agent, who has the money-raking wheeze of training young Indians in baseball but needs lessons in humanity. Or his endlessly patient tenant (Lake Bell), serving redemption on legs; or the Indian kids (Suraj Sharma, Madhur Mittal), reduced to culture-clash/training-montage fodder.

Hamm and Bell keep this hooey light, but you can’t lob a ball in here without hitting notes played better in Jerry Maguire and Slumdog Millionaire .