The Mythology of The Sandlot

  

The Mythology of The Sandlot

 

I’ve already discussed in-depth why 1993’s The Sandlot is one of my favourite films of all-time (click the link to read if you haven’t already: https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-sandlot-1993-favourite-films-series.html), but there was one aspect of it in particular I’ve wanted to dig deeper into for a while now and I knew it would need to be its own thing. The Sandlot is primarily remembered for capturing the fun of being a kid, but something else I think it does particularly well is making the audience see the world through a kid’s eyes, and that’s because of the way the primary antagonist is handled. “The Beast” is one of the best movie monsters I can think of, and I want to explore, in-depth, why that is.

Let’s begin with the not-so-subtle foreshadowing by The Narrator (main character Scotty Smalls retelling the story of his youth that we’re watching play out on screen), telling us it was the summer his best friend Benny got him “…out of the biggest pickle I’d ever be in.” Obviously we’re wondering what “the pickle” was, and the earliest hint of something being wrong when Smalls first goes to the sandlot to try joining in with Benny and the others is when the fence at the far end of the field rattles and there’s a monstrous sound from the other side. Right away, we’re seeing things from Smalls’ perspective, and we never leave the child perspective for the rest of the film.

The Beast is hinted at very early on, but the hints don’t amount to anything right away. They continue to punctuate the early scenes at the sandlot—even right after Smalls catches his first pop fly and it’s a celebratory moment, he turns around, looks at the fence, and we see the shadow of the Beast. It looks like a dinosaur: massive, plodding, growling, and while you could point out it looks obviously fake and exaggerated, that’s sort of the point. Smalls isn’t seeing the Beast for what it actually is, he’s seeing what his imagination is creating based on the information he’s receiving. That’s absolutely a kid thing to do. It’s one of the old clichés that kids think there’s a monster in their closet or under their bed, and all their imaginations need is a spooky looking shadow or a little creak in the floor to conjure the fictitious nightmares.

Then we get to the “truth” when Smalls tries to climb the fence to get a baseball that’s gone over into the yard and the kids pull him away. I use quotes on “truth” because the story Squints tells to Smalls and the others at the campout in the tree fort is clearly not 100% true, but for Smalls, it becomes the only truth he knows. Even he thinks the story is made up just to scare him, but I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s recount the tale Squints tells. Old Man Mertle had a junk yard dog that he fed so much meat to it grew giant and mean, and it killed so many thieves who tried to steal stuff from him that the police told him to lock it up in his back yard “FOR-E-VER” and any baseball that goes over the fence into the yard is never seen again. One kid allegedly went over the fence once and disappeared, presumably eaten by the Beast. There’s clearly some truth in the scary story, and when Smalls looks over the fence from the tree fort that night, he’s convinced of it all. For viewers, the visuals accompanying the story are perfect for how a kid would imagine it as it’s told. I always thought of it as seeing what Smalls is picturing in his head. It’s black-and-white, grainy, and the Beast is shown to be massive and scary. As Squints says, “A true killing machine.”    

The Beast is depicted as a local legend that all the kids know about, but the line between fact and fiction is blurred. It’s like a classic myth. There has to be a seed of truth, and obviously, there is something behind the fence. But what is it really? We get glimpses of the yard here and there, mostly from the kid’s perspective through holes in the fence, making it even more foreboding and mysterious. I love the set design for the yard. It’s littered with random debris (the doll with an arrow through one eye always stood out to me and creeped me out), it’s dirty, the dog house is always billowing with dust, the rusty chain rattles, and the battered fence has the same visual power of every technique Steven Spielberg used to hide the shark in Jaws. What you imagine is always scarier than what you see, so we never get a good look at the Beast for most of the movie. We know it’s a dog, the way we know the monster in Jaws is a shark, but it’s not just a dog, it’s a truly monstrous one. Benny even calls it “a giant gorilla dog thing” at one point. As a kid watching The Sandlot, I was convinced the Beast really was a monster, but as an adult, you suspect it’s just a dog that’s being exaggerated, both in the way the characters talk about it and in the way it’s shown in glimpses on-screen. The glimpses we get of it do look exaggerated, but in a good way. This is the way the kids see it; whether it really looked like that or not is irrelevant, and the quality of the special effects is also inconsequential.

The genius of the Beast as a concept is we only ever get to see it from the kid’s point of view or hear about it from stories they’ve heard or told each other. Not once do Smalls’ parents ever get involved in their struggle with it or even talk about it. If they did, the mythic terror would be shattered. The kids even make the point the audience is obviously going to make: why not just go over to Mr. Mertle’s house, knock on his door, and ask for the ball back? No way, not an option, Mr. Mertle’s status as a mean old man is as potent and the Beast’s status as a baseball-hoarding, kid-eating monstrosity. And so the lost baseballs remain in the lair of the Beast, which isn’t a big deal as long as they have an extra 98 cents lying around, but then Smalls makes a fatal mistake that sets the rest of the films events in motion.

Around the fifty minute mark, Benny hits a baseball so hard it busts the guts out of it, and the team views this unbelievable event as an omen. The concept is consistent with their beliefs about the Beast as a mythic monster, but also with their views on the legendary baseball player George Herman “Babe” Ruth (A.K.A The Babe, The Sultan of Swat, The Titan of Terror, The King of Crash, The Colossus of Clout, and The Great Bambino). They have deified Babe Ruth. I love the contrast between how the kids view the Beast and how they view the Babe. Both are mythic figures to them, but one is their ultimate hero, and the other is their worst nightmare. There’s just one problem: Smalls doesn’t realize who Babe Ruth is, so when he runs home to borrow the baseball on his step-dad’s trophy mantle, he doesn’t realize he’s swiping a ball signed by the legend himself, and when he hits it over the fence into Mr. Mertle’s yard, he discovers he has messed up worse than he even first realized.

After the kids understand the baseball Smalls hit over the fence is signed by Babe Ruth, Benny explains to Smalls that Babe Ruth was the greatest baseball player who ever lived, saying he “was less than a God but more than a man, like Hercules or something.” We’ll come back to this comment. The kids have to get that ball back, so they begin to strategize, with simple approaches at first, but each time they fail they come back with a more elaborate plan, and each time the Beast destroys their efforts in an over-the-top fashion. Again, this is likely the way the kids saw it at the time, or the way Scotty remembers it; the Beast is powerful enough to crumple steel and leap as high as the top of the fence to catch a baseball in its jaws. Impossible for a real dog, but their imaginations exaggerate the Beast’s abilities, so to say these scenes come off as silly or fake is a hollow and unfounded criticism. 

We (the audience) also get to see a little more of the Beast each time the kids try a new technique for retrieving the ball. A paw here, then a paw and a leg, until eventually we get to see its massive drooling jaws and the danger gets too real. Yeah-Yeah is almost eaten, Timmy is nearly killed when the vacuums explode in the treehouse (okay, maybe not almost killed, but hey, there’s an explosion and he was still in there when it happened, it could have been worse than him just walking out covered in dust!) and then when all hope seems lost, Benny has a dream in which he meets Babe Ruth and is given some sage advice from the baseball god.

And so, Benny becomes a legend himself, hopping that fence to “pickle the beast” and get that ball back once and for all. It’s been set up earlier in the film that Benny is not only the best player on the team, but the fastest runner. When he finally breaches the barrier between the sandlot and the realm of the Beast, we get our first proper look at what it really is. It turns out to be a Mastiff, not a gorilla dog, but it’s still a large and imposing canine. The scene of Benny facing the Beast for the first time is incredibly intense. Lots of close-ups and a music track composed of whistling and twangy guitar make it feel like a shootout in a western. The confrontation between boy and beast has been built up to perfectly. Benny gets the ball, leaps back over the fence, and for a brief moment, he’s won, but then the Beast also leaps over the fence and an epic chase ensues all across town.

The chase ends where it began, on the other side of Mr. Mertle’s fence. Benny leaps it again, the Beast smashes through the boards, and then, when it seems like it’s over for Benny, the entire fence collapses! The wall separating their two worlds comes crashing down right on the Beast himself, reducing the killer dog to nothing but a hurt, scared animal. Smalls encourages Benny to help him lift the fence to save the Beast, and in a redemptive moment that truly feels earned, the Beast licks Smalls all over his face and reveals itself not to be a monster, but a good dog. He’s the best boy, not a monster of legend. He even shows them all the baseballs he’s stashed, and when they take the dog back to Mr. Mertle, they find out the dog’s owner isn’t a mean old man, either, just a lonely former baseball player who even knew Babe Ruth back in the day.

I don’t need to say much else about the ending of the film. It’s truly satisfying, uplifting, and touching, but the relief that comes with finding out the Beast isn’t a murderous monster is genuine, both for the kids and the audience. It turns out the dog even has a different name from his misleading moniker: Hercules. Here’s a line from the Narrator during the wrap-up at the end: “It was weird that Benny had said that Babe Ruth was like the Hercules of Baseball and the Beast's name ended up being Hercules. None of us could ever figure out what that meant, but we were all amazed by it.” It’s a funny and poignant line.

So there you have it: The Sandlot might seem like a simple, fun family movie that, as the tagline puts it (far too simplistically) is about “The adventure of a lifetime, the summer of their dreams...the dog of their nightmares” but the way the story is told is far more sure handed and creative than its often given credit for. Critic reviews were middling when it was released, and it’s never really been reappraised, but there’s a reason The Sandlot still has such a devoted fan base to this day and continues to be discovered by new generations. For the record, there were two sequels, a TV series is in the works, all the films are available on Disney+, and Patrick Renna who played Ham Porter has a YouTube channel where he has reunited with his co-stars and discussed the film with them all these years later. The director, too, David Mickey Evans, remains vocal about the film on his blog, and while he never made another movie that left an impact like The Sandlot, he is still clearly proud of what he made to this day, and rightfully so.

The Sandlot has left a worthy legacy, and while I think I covered why it’s so great on the whole in my previous Favourite Films entry, I wanted to take a closer look at this particular aspect of the film as a major reason for why it is so great. I’ve never heard anyone else talk about the film in this way, and maybe some will agree or some will think I’m making a big thing out of nothing describing this as a “mythology”, but it certainly seems to me that the clever writing/storytelling at work here is a big part of what has made the film endure as one of my all-time favourites from when I was very young and just discovering what it meant to be a film fan to where I am now in my adult life.

The Sandlot (1993): Favourite Films Series

The Sandlot (1993): Favourite Films Series

If you were a kid who grew up in the 90’s, you might remember The Sandlot. You might even remember it fondly. I loved the film as a kid, but when I was in my teens, I went back to it, and not only found a new love and appreciation for it, but came to the realization that it was actually one of my all-time favourites, and would always hold a special place in my heart. It’s rare for something nostalgic from your childhood to endure like that, but I think it also speaks to the underrated qualities of The Sandlot.

There’s a particular kind of magic you only experience as a kid during summer break from school, and The Sandlot tells a tale that perfectly captures that magic, which makes it one of the best summer films ever made. I was going to do a top ten list on the best summer-set films, but decided against it, because The Sandlot was always going to be my number-one pick, so I thought I might as well just talk about it at length instead of nine other films plus this one. Scotty Smalls is the new kid on the block, he doesn’t have any friends yet, but he sees a kid in the neighborhood packing a baseball bat and glove, so he follows him to this place they call “the sandlot”, an old baseball diamond where eight friends hang out every day and play an endless game of baseball. The other kids are hesitant to let the inexperienced, nerdy Smalls into their group/team, but Benny sticks his neck out for Smalls and the two become best friends. It’s not all fun and games all summer long, though. Scotty’s lack of baseball knowledge lands him in a world of trouble, when a highly valuable baseball signed by the legendary player Babe Ruth ends up over a fence and into the jaws of a local neighborhood legend, a monstrous dog known as “the Beast.”

The Sandlot has a bit of an unconventional structure. In a normal three-act screenplay, there is always a plot point at the twenty minute mark. Seriously, check out any one of your favourite movies, and you’ll find, sure enough, at the twenty minute mark or somewhere very close, something will happen that will drive the story forward in a certain direction. In The Sandlot, the plot point at twenty minutes is Benny helping Smalls catch his first baseball and make his first successful throw. It’s a triumphant moment: Smalls is accepted by the other kids and allowed to play with them, it establishes his new close friendship with Benny, and it gets the story underway. If Smalls hadn’t caught the ball, he would have been sent away from the sandlot by the other kids, he probably wouldn’t have made any friends that summer, and there wouldn’t have been a movie (or at least not the same movie, maybe a very different and more boring one). But another thing conventionally-structured screenplays usually do is establish a source of opposition for the protagonist early on. The Sandlot does establish one, but not for a while. Time is taken to let the audience get to know the characters first before the big problem comes up.

The characters and dialogue all come off as genuine. These don’t feel like “movie kids” written by an adult trying to remember how kids sound and act and what they do. Writer/Director/Narrator David Mickey Evans did not forget what it was like to be a kid, and even though these kids are living in the 1960’s, a time long before the internet or cellphones or video games, there’s an undeniable timeless quality to how the kids talk to each other and the kind of activities they participate in, in addition to their baseball games. Briefly on that note, baseball is the main focus, and even though sports movies aren’t a genre I gravitate toward, I think The Sandlot technically counts as one, making it my favourite sports movie by a landslide. It makes you care about baseball and understand how fun it is, even if you aren’t a fan.

Going back to the characters, when you watch them all playing or hanging out, it feels like you’re watching an actual group of friends. Many of the scenes, lines, and moments feel improvisational, which adds to the realism. The casting, too, is excellent, especially for a cast primarily made up of child actors. Not a single kid stands out as being particularly weak or not fitting in. One of the kids remembered most fondly is Patrick Renna as Hamilton “Ham” Porter with his repeated line that has worked its way into the realm of mainstream pop culture references. I would be remiss if I didn’t include it. “You’re killing me, Smalls!” Every single character is unique and memorable (from the slightly annoying but endearing Alan “Yeah-Yeah” McClennan to the pitcher who throws his famous “heater” Kenny DeNunez) and even though not every character gets a moment to shine, like Bertram or the brothers Timmy and Tommy Timmins, every one of them at least have little moments that all add up to greatness, and these start to shine through the more you re-watch it.

This is one of those movies like Alien or Iron Man or What We Do in the Shadows (bet you didn’t think I could connect it to all those movies) where a lot of the dialogue is easy to miss if you’re not listening carefully, and this is likely because of the improvisational style, but that’s part of what adds to the re-watchability factor. When I was a kid, I missed so many of the lines because they’re spoken by characters who aren’t necessarily front and center, or they might be said over other lines, but they’re fun to pick out and laugh about later. Even though Smalls is the main character and the one we get most of the story through, Benny is the heart and soul of the group, with the greatest passion for baseball of them all. As the narration goes, “You see, for us, baseball was a game. But, for Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez, baseball was life.”

I’ve covered the main aspects of what makes The Sandlot entertaining and timeless, but all of these aspects also contribute to another reason it’s one of my favourites: it’s very, very funny. PG-rated family movies can be hit or miss for comedy, but The Sandlot doesn’t come off as restrained. The kids utter swears (not a lot, but not just one or two either), they are completely unsupervised by their parents, and they even get into chewing tobacco, which makes for one of the funniest scenes in the whole movie, where they celebrate a victory against a rival team by going on an amusement park ride and throwing up everywhere. Even when things get intense with the central problem of the film (the baseball that goes over the fence) the comedy doesn’t stop coming—if anything, it just gets funnier. I find comedies are often good for a laugh one time, but when you know the jokes that are coming, it doesn’t hold up the same to watch them over again. The Sandlot is one of the few I could never get tired of. Certain lines, moments, and situations will never not be funny to me.

The Sandlot is obviously an easy recommendation from me, but if you didn’t see it as a kid and come into it for the first time as a jaded adult, your level of enjoyment could vary. The best way to come at it is to remember this is a story about kids and what it’s like to be a kid, and to enjoy the humorous angle it takes. It isn’t a life-shattering, mind-blowing story, but it’s a lot of fun, and if you have fond memories of childhood, I guarantee it will stir up some good feelings. Plus, it’s not without a few genuinely poignant moments and lines. I’ll never forget Babe Ruth’s two great lines to Benny: “Everybody gets one chance to do something great. Most people never take the chance, either because they're too scared, or they don't recognize it when it spits on their shoes.” And: “Remember, kid, there’s heroes and there’s legends. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. Follow your heart, kid, and you’ll never go wrong.” 

 

For more insights about why The Sandlot is great: 

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-mythology-of-sandlot.html

 

 

 

Godzilla Singular Point: Season One Review (Anime Series)

Godzilla Singular Point: Season One Review 

 

Until last month, I had never watched an anime TV series before. It might sound crazy, but it’s true. I just never got into anime when I was a kid, but I have nothing against it. Of course, leave it up to Toho to convince me to getting around to finally sitting down and watching a whole season of an anime from beginning to end.

I still can’t believe it’s taken this long for Toho to make a Godzilla anime series. Big G has mainly appeared in feature films, but he’s been on TV in the past, too, such as Toho’s live-action series Zone Fighter from the 1970s, the Hanna-Barbara Saturday morning cartoon just called Godzilla, and Godzilla: The Series, which was a cartoon follow-up to TriStar’s 1998 Godzilla (and was actually better than the movie). In 2018, a trilogy of animated Godzilla films hit Netflix, and though they were done in an anime style, they still count as films, not a TV series. Now here we are in 2021 and Godzilla Singular Point is upon us. It premiered in Japan back in April with new episodes airing weekly, but here in Canada we had it dumped on Netflix all at once in June. I’ve finally watched it all and can now share my thoughts.

Let me start at the beginning. I was pretty excited for this show because…well, Godzilla, obviously, but more specifically, it was set to feature monsters from the Showa era (1950’s-70’s), some of whom had not been seen in all those intervening years. I also thought a Godzilla TV series might have a leg up on the typical Godzilla movie formula in being able to achieve more human character development by telling a bigger story over a longer period of time. The trilogy of animated Godzilla films were dull, overly serious, and lacking action, but Singular Point looked visually appealing, fun, and inventive.

The theme music started up in episode one over the opening credits, and wow did it get me pumped up. The opening title theme is called “in case…” by BiSH, and it is so awesome I didn’t skip the credits once (not that I ever do anyway, but still). It was frustrating in a way, too, because the music would always get me hyped up for the episode, but rarely did I ever reach the same level of hype during anything that happened in any of the actual episodes…

Godzilla Singular Point was a bit of a mixed bag for me right from the start, but it kept me watching thanks to some intriguing story points laid out early on. A couple of engineers trace the broadcast of a strange old song to an abandoned house, as does a graduate student who is an expert in imaginary creatures and made-up science, but the creatures don’t remain imaginary for long: a whole flock of pterosaurs from another dimension (referred to individually and collectively as Rodan) invade Japan, and with them comes this strange red dust, which ends up correlating with them and the other monsters that appear. Luckily, the boss of the engineering students, a crazy little old man, has a secret weapon: his large robot Jet Jaguar.

The roster of monsters is quite unique, and all the redesigns are awesome. Rodan looks more like a real pterodactyl than ever before, similar to the concept art for Godzilla King of the Monsters, but he still has his classic roar. However, the Rodan don’t really do all that much, and spend most of the series in a smaller-than-usual form. Anguirus was my favourite of the old monsters brought back with a new look, and the episodes featuring him were among the ones I enjoyed the most. Jet Jaguar looks recognizable, but was given spindly robot arms this time, which I didn’t love. His form changes throughout the season, which I appreciated (he even gets wheels at one point) and he goes from being a remote-control mech to a robot with A.I. It was fun to have him back, but the monster I was most surprised to see was Gabara, who only appeared once before this in one of the worst (if not the worst) Showa-era entries, Godzilla’s Revenge. Somehow, they made Gabara, one of the worst kaiju, look fearsome and act formidable, though he’s not called Gabara this time, and is actually billed as a new kaiju, but clearly that’s the monster it’s supposed to be. Other classic monsters appear briefly as well, such as the giant serpent Manda and the giant spider Kumonga, and the monsters are spread throughout the series fairly well, though they rarely feel like direct threats to the main characters or humanity as a whole.

And then there’s Godzilla himself, the most famous monster of all, the one whose name is right there in the title, the one who started this whole franchise in the first place and has kept it sustained for decades. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but the Americans did a better job with Godzilla in 2021 than the Japanese did. Let me explain. Legendary’s American Godzilla took on Kong earlier this year in Godzilla vs. Kong, and it was a crowd-pleasing royal rumble with Godzilla returning as the bad guy, battling not only Kong but another classic foe. He appears for the first time early in the film, poses a real threat, and has multiple memorable moments. Overall, I thought he was used the best in GVK out of all three of the MonsterVerse entries so far.

At the start of Singular Point, Godzilla is dead. He’s just a skeleton in a basement, and stays that way as the other monsters start popping up. A living Godzilla doesn’t appear on-screen until halfway through the season, and even when he does, it’s a very brief appearance at the end of the episode. Many moviegoers complained Godzilla wasn’t shown enough in the 2014 Godzilla, but 2016’s Shin Godzilla didn’t show him much more, and not as many fans complained with that one. Historically, Hollywood can’t hold a candle to Toho’s Godzilla efforts. I think complaining that there’s not enough Godzilla can finally be fully justifiable with Singular Point. He shows up way too late. They had 13 episodes, and they kind of blew it. The redesign is good, he’s very powerful, and this version feels like a faithful follow-up to the one from Shin Godzilla, with multiple forms and a different style of atomic breath that’s still cool and ultra-destructive. But, my problems go beyond just him not being in it enough.

Godzilla is not a primary threat for the majority of the show. He’s just another monster when he first shows up, and while he causes some damage, he poses no unique threat to any of the main characters, and we see so little of him, he barely has time to make an impact at all before the end. A staple of the Godzilla series is seeing him fight other monsters or destroy the military. Even though the military attacks him and there are other monsters present, neither of these things happen much at all. Godzilla just doesn’t have enough awesome moments to shine and never is used to his full potential.

So with it being a TV show, are the characters given more time to develop and become likable and carry the monster-free scenes? Unfortunately, no. The characters are not relatable, nor are they badass or funny, they’re just…uninteresting. They talk way too much, and the stuff they talk about makes up the bulk of what I disliked the most about this show. It’s all this pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo, and it just goes on and on. I don’t know how many times the term “Orthogonal Diagonalizer” is uttered. I still don’t really understand what an Orthogonal Diagonalizer is. There’s just way too much fake science being talked about scene after scene—in fact, there’s just too much talking period. I found myself zoning out constantly because I couldn’t understand the importance of what it was the characters were talking about.

One of the prominent characters isn’t actually a human at all, but an A.I. that often manifests as a cute cartoon dog, and it sometimes gets pretty annoying. They do this thing repeatedly where a conversation is shown on a smart phone screen and text rapidly exchanges with emoijis while characters talk over it, and it’s sort of an interesting way to give us something to look at while they exchange expository dialogue, but that gets repetitive after a while, too, and to be completely honest, by the time I got to the final couple of episodes, I didn’t really understand what was going on anymore. Singular Point is a very heavy sci-fi plot with far too much of it told to viewers by characters who are not particularly interesting to listen to. I was lost in the final episode.

Sad to say, but to wrap this review up, I must admit I didn’t really like Godzilla Singular Point all that much. Sure, there were some cool visuals and the overall visual aesthetic looks good, the monsters were entertaining enough when shown, and the music and sound
design were great all the way through, but the story and human characters left a lot to be desired. Every episode seemed to end on a cliff hanger, and many of them strung me along to the next episode, but by the halfway point in the next episode I would be checking the time to see how much longer was left. The cliff hangers were rarely resolved in a satisfying way, anyway. The worst example was the episode that ends right before a fight scene between Jet Jaguar and Anguirus, and then the next episode doesn’t even get to the fight until like ten minutes in! If there is a second season, I might consider checking it out, but I definitely will not be waiting on the edge of my seat for it. I have no idea if I should recommend it to fans of other anime shows, but I think hardcore Godzilla fans should still give it a shot. I’m glad I did, even if it didn’t really do it for me in the end.