The (super)Natural

Field of Dreams

Director: Phil Alden Robinson

Cast: Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta, Timothy Busfield, Gaby Hoffmann

Released: May 5, 1989

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture (lost to Driving Miss Daisy)

Best Original Score - James Horner (lost to Alen Menken for The Little Mermaid)

Best Adapted Screenplay - Phil Alden Robinson (lost to Alfred Uhry for Driving Miss Daisy)

Field of Dreams is a movie I watched many times when I was younger because it was a favorite of my family's. Both of my parents (and many of my relatives) are from Iowa, so you can probably see why it was such a staple for me growing up! This is just such a quintessential American movie; it's got baseball and takes place in the nation's heartland. As someone who has been to Iowa many times, I can confirm that it definitely captured the state.

An interesting side note about the movie's title: as you may already know, Field of Dreams is an adaptation of W.P. Kinsella's novel, Shoeless Joe (which I read when I was a freshman in high school, but don't remember anything about it), but the studio didn't want the movie to be the same title because they thought that the audience would think it's about a homeless guy or that Costner is supposed to be the title character. Somebody suggested Field of Dreams, but the director didn't like it (not sure why!). He talked to the author to tell him that although the screening was well received, they had to give it a different title. Kinsella told him the he didn't come up with the book's title and said he wanted to call it Field of Dreams instead, so the director took that as a sign and thus that's how the film became Field of Dreams. I'm guessing whoever suggested the movie be called that in the first place already knew Kinsella wanted that as the original title of his book or maybe it was just a huge coincidence. 

It's been almost fifteen years since I've seen the movie so there were a few things I forgot. One of those is the movie gets going really quickly. It takes less than five minutes before Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) hears the voice.

We get some quick backstory about Ray. Actually, we first start with some quick backstory about his father, John Kinsella. He was born in North Dakota in 1896, was in the war, settled in Chicago and became a fan of the White Sox and a lover of baseball. He played in the minors for a year or two, "but nothing ever came of it." He moved to Brooklyn where he married his wife and Ray was born in 1952. As he was going through the timeline, I mentally did the math in my head and was thinking his father was pretty old when Ray was born. He would have turned 56 in 1952. Ray does admit his father was "already an old man" when he was born, and yes, he certainly was! His mother (no idea how old she was) died when he was three so he was raised by a man old enough to be his grandfather. He grew up knowing about Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and "the great Shoeless Joe Jackson." He and his dad fought a lot and when it was time for him to go to college, he "picked the farthest one from home" which turned out to be Berkeley. There he met his future wife Annie (Amy Madigan) and one of the things they had in common was that "she came from Iowa, and [he] had once heard of Iowa." After graduation, they moved there and got married in June of 1974 and his dad died the following fall. According to him, "a few years later" their daughter, Karin, was born. This does not track because Karin is played by a very young Gaby Hoffmann who was born in 1982. The movie takes place in 1988 and she can't be no older than six so saying she was born "a few years" after 1974 isn't quite correct. To me, a few years is maybe 3-5. But I suppose it's all semantics. 

Annie talked Ray into buying a farm and at 36, he tells us "Until I heard the voice, I'd never done a crazy thing in my whole life." 

So, yeah, all that backstory takes less than five minutes to tell. I assume it's much more fleshed out in the book. Like, I bet W.P. Kinsella devoted more than a paragraph to that! Probably even more than a chapter!

Of course, the voice he's talking about is the one that says, "If you build it, he will come." He's out in the cornfield when he hears it and his wife and daughter are sitting on the porch swing. When he asks Annie if they heard anything she says they didn't. When they're back inside, he tells Annie what the voice said and she seems to take it all in stride. She asks, "If you build what, who will come?" which is a good question. She even jokes about it the next day (he heard the voice again laying in bed) when he takes Karin to school and asks him, "What if the voice calls while you're gone?" He jokes back and tells her to "take a message."  

He hears the voice again and this time he sees a quick image of a baseball field, then he sees an image of Shoeless Joe Jackson. This seems to come out of nowhere and it makes me wonder how this was done in the book. Like, was he given more context clues? At dinner (where the family is eating freshly picked corn on the cob - yum!) he tells Annie he thinks he knows what the voice meant and if he builds a baseball field out there, then "Shoeless Joe Jackson will get to come back and play ball again." She replies, "You're kidding" and laughs. Even though she tells him that it's "the craziest thing I've ever heard", she's very supportive of him. Oh, did I mention that Shoeless Joe Jackson died in 1951? She asks him if he's actually thinking of doing this and he replies, "I can't think of one good reason why I should", then tells her he's scared of "turning into [his] father" and that he never "forgave him for getting old." The main reason he wants to build this baseball field is because his father never did one spontaneous thing and he's "afraid of that happening to [him]" and "something tells [him] that this may be [his] last chance to do something about it." As we already know, Annie thinks he's crazy, but she's very supportive. Perhaps a little too supportive. She tells him, "If you  really feel you should do this, then you should do it." I don't think most wives would be that encouraging and let their husbands just randomly build a baseball field (complete with stadium lights)!

We next get a montage of him building the field. A few people have come by in their cars to gawk and take pictures. I was wondering how he got the money for everything (especially the stadium lights; where did he get those anyway?), but we'll find out later that he used most of their savings to build this baseball field. I wonder how long it took for them to build this because it seems Ray and Annie are the only ones working on it! While he's plowing the cornfield, he tells his daughter (and the audience if they weren't privy) how Shoeless Joe got his nickname: "When he was still in the minors, he'd bought a new pairs of spikes and they hurt his feet. So, about the sixth inning, he took them off and played the rest of the game in just his socks. The other players kidded him and called him "Shoeless Joe" and the name stuck." 

He continues his exposition about the baseball legend when he tells Karin about how Jackson's team (the White Sox) threw the World Series in 1919. According to the Wikipedia article I read about this, "Jackson and seven other White Sox players were accused of accepting $5,000 each (equivalent to $88,000 in 2023) to throw the World Series." Ray says that he did take the money, but nobody could prove that "he did a single thing to lose those games." 

You know, this reminds me of on Survivor when some tribes purposely lose because they want to go to Tribal Council to get rid of dead weight or a teammate who is toxic or isn't contributing anything. I mean, I know it's not exactly the same thing because nobody's being bribed on Survivor and it's not, you know, illegal to throw a challenge (but some people think it's a terrible idea), but you usually need everybody who's in on it to throw the challenge. Perhaps Shoeless Joe played as best as he could because he knew his other teammates were going to really stink it up. The commissioner of baseball (I had no idea there was such a thing!) suspended the eight players for life and they were never allowed to play professional baseball again. 

Later, when the baseball field is complete, he and Annie are laying out on the grass and he tells her that his father claims he saw Joe years later "playing under a made-up name in some 10th-rate league in Carolina." He looks around smiling as he says, "I have created something totally illogical." He is very lucky to have such a supportive wife! I love this scene because you can feel the ambience of Iowa...a muggy summer night with the crickets chirping and perhaps the waft of cow manure in the distance (hopefully very far in the distance!). 

Annie gets up in the middle of the night to see Ray sitting by the window, just looking out at the field. Obviously, he's waiting for something to happen now that his field is complete. The next thing we know, there's snow on the ground and the house is decorated for Christmas. While he has family over, he's still looking out the window, but still, nothing has happened. This seems to be the only instance of time passing. I feel like there should have been more because the next scene is when he and Annie are discussing their finances (and how they spent most of their savings building the field) and Karin tells him, "There's a man out there on your lawn." Karin forgot to mention the important detail that the man in question is wearing a baseball uniform! 

So we have an interesting dialect scene when Annie tells Ray "I'll put up some coffee." Most people (if not all!) would say "I'll put on some coffee" (or they would just simply say "I'll make some coffee"). I would had just assumed this was an Iowa/Midwest thing, but most of my relatives are from Iowa and I've lived in the Midwest my whole life and I have NEVER heard anyone say it that way. It doesn't sound natural to me. I even listened to it again to make sure the subtitles weren't wrong, but she definitely says "up".

Ray turns on the stadium lights and starts swinging the ball to the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) with the bat. At first, Joe doesn't say a word until he jogs up to Ray and after Ray says hi and introduces himself, he tells Ray that his name is Joe Jackson. He asks Ray if he (Ray) can pitch so he can swing the bat. 

After a few hits, Joe talks about how much he loves this game and even myself, who doesn't really care for baseball, starts to get nostalgic and sentimental for what he's talking about. And just wait until the James Earl Jones speech! He asks about the lights and Ray tells him that all the stadiums have them. He agrees with Joe that they "make them harder to see the ball", but tells him that "owners found that more people could attend night games." 

 

Annie and Karin have come out and head in their direction so they can meet Joe, but when he walks towards them and reaches the edge of the field, he stops. In a later scene, we will find out why he can't go any further. Karin, being a six-year-old, asks him if he's a ghost. He asks her, "What do you think?" and she replies, "You look real to me." Annie invites him inside (probably for that coffee!), but he says he doesn't think he can. He turns to go back towards the cornfield, but then turns back and asks Ray if he can come back again and Ray tells him yes, that he built this for him. Joe tells him there are others, meaning the other eight players that were also suspended and that "it would really mean a lot to them." Ray tells him they'll all welcome. Joe has one more question for Ray, probably one of the better known lines in a movie filled with famous quotes: "Is this heaven?" Ray replies, "No, it's Iowa." My aunt (who lives in Iowa) loves this line and often quotes it. 

Has that ever been a tourism slogan for Iowa? If not, it should be! You know when you enter a new state and you see the welcome sign with the state's name and then some slogan (usually some pun or something the state is known for)? Well, I went to look up the signs for each state and Iowa's says 

The People of Iowa Welcome You

Iowa

Fields of Opportunities

First of all, I feel like these are two different welcomes and they should have gone with just one. Obviously the "Fields of Opportunities" is a play on of Field of Dreams. I will give them credit for that, but honestly, they really missed the mark with not going with

Is this Heaven?

No, it's

IOWA!

C'mon, Iowa Tourism Board! 

The next morning, Annie's mother, brother, Mark (Timothy Busfield), and Mark's wife are at the house. Mark is telling Ray he's going to lose the farm and the baseball field is going to bankrupt him and if he sells the farm now, he can get a fair price. Karin comes in to tell her dad that "the baseball game is on" and Mark thinks there's one on TV even though Ray and Karin go outside. 

They sit on the bleachers, Karin with her popcorn (nothing seemingly to drink, though) as the eight players emerge from the cornfield and start to play ball. A few minutes later, Annie comes out with Mark and the others as they're getting ready to leave. We quickly learn that Mark, his wife, and his and Annie's mother cannot see the eight men out on the field. When Karin tell him they're watching "the baseball men", he turns around, looking confused. I'm honestly surprised that they didn't show a shot of an empty field so we could see it from Mark's perspective. During this whole scene, the ball players are always in the background. Both Ray and Annie are surprised Mark and the two women can't see anything, but should they really be that surprised? These are ghost, for a lack of a better word, out there. 

When it's time for the ball players to go back to where they came from, they walk into the cornfield and visual effects are used to show them vanishing. I think this would have been more effective if they kept on walking until we couldn't see them anymore because eventually they would have disappeared into the cornfield! 

As Ray is heading back inside, he hears the voice again and this time it says, "Ease his pain." He has no idea what that means and doesn't get any more instructions or details when he asks, "Whose pain?" When he tells his wife he heard the voice again, she makes a joke, asking him if he has to build a football field this time. 

That evening, there is a PTA meeting scheduled to talk about book banning which really has Annie irked. While there, a future Trump voter holds up a book called The Boat Rocker by Terrance Mann claiming that "smut and filth like this has no place in our school." I laughed when Annie leans over to Ray and whispers, "Fascist. I'd like to ease her pain." She'll have a couple more zingers for this woman before the evening is over! 

One of the school administrators who's running the meeting tells the woman, "That book is hardly smut" and is "considered by many to be the classic novel about the 1960s." Unfortunately, many of the attendees agree with Ms. Fascist. The administrator reminds them that the author is a Pulitzer Prize winner and "is widely regarded as the finest satirist of his time." Ms. Fascist continues her rant, saying the books of Mr. Mann "endorse promiscuity, godlessness, the mongrelization of the races..." Annie is getting very angry and her eyebrows are raised and she mouths "wow" in disbelief when the woman says that. 

 

During all this, Ray has been writing "ease his pain" over and over on the itinerary they were given for the meeting and has an epiphany that it may be referring to Terrance Mann. Annie stands up to confront Ms. Fascist (we actually do learn her name but I forgot what it was and it's more fun/accurate to call her that) and tells her and the rest of the attendees that Terrance Mann coined the phrase "make love, not war." She tells the woman that if she had experienced the '60s, she would think the same way too. The woman haughtily informs her that she "experienced the '60s" and Annie replies, "No, I think you had two '50s and moved right into the '70s" and sits down. Ooh, burn, Annie! The woman retorts by telling her, "Well, your husband plowed under his corn and built a baseball field." After telling Ray that she'll "be cool", Annie stands back up and replies, "At least he is not a book burner, you Nazi cow." Yeah, pretty sure Annie won with that one, but the woman still snaps back with "At least I'm not married to the biggest horses' ass in three counties." Yeah, no, Annie still won. She takes over the meeting when she wants to "put it to a vote" and asks the audience "Who's for Eva Braun here?" Sadly, at first, it seems she doesn't have any supporters, even after she asks them "Who wants to spit on the Constitution of the United States of America? " But when she asks "Who thinks freedom is a good thing?", they start raising their hands. There's a funny moment when Ray is still deep in thought and she smacks him on the shoulder and he raises his hand. 

As they're leaving, Annie is super excited that everyone is on her side now. Ray tells her he knows whose pain he's supposed to ease: Terrance Mann's. Annie asks how does he know that and he replies, "I don't know I just know. I was right about building the field wasn't I?" Hmmm, sorry, movie, but I'm not buying it. Seems like a bit of a lame answer. Here's a fun fact: in the book, it's J.D. Salinger whose pain he has to ease. Annie asks him, "What's Terrance Mann got to do with baseball?" He doesn't know that either and so we get a montage of him going to the library and looking up articles about Mann on the microfiche (the children of today would be horrified that Google or Wikipedia didn't exist back then!) and reading his works. Ray tells Annie that Mann stopped writing in the '70s and now "writes software for interactive children's videos" (does he mean computer games?). He found a short story Mann published in a magazine in 1962 called "This Is Not a Kite" where the hero of the story is named John Kinsella; Ray's father's name. The last interview he ever gave was in 1973 where he says his dream as a child "was to play at Ebbets Field with Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers." Ray says Mann was "a baseball fanatic" and in order to "ease his pain", he needs to take him to a game at Fenway Park. (Mann lives in Boston.) This time, Annie isn't too sure about this. Building a field on their farm? Totally fine! Traveling to Boston? Big no-no! She doesn't want him to travel all that way because they are having financial problems and he needs to stay at the farm. They have a bit of a dispute and Ray tells her he strongly thinks there's a reason he needs to go and he thinks "something is gonna happen at the game." Annie admits that she had a dream of Ray and Terrance Mann watching a game together at Fenway Park, and what do you know Ray had the exact same dream, so it must be a sign! Ray now has Annie's blessing to go to Boston.

I looked up how long it is from Dyersville, Iowa (that's the actual town where the baseball field is) to Boston and it's a little over 19 hours to drive there without any stops. Too bad Terrance didn't live a little closer, like Chicago or Minneapolis. 

When Ray arrives in Boston, he finds out where Terrance Mann (James Earl Jones) lives (surprisingly this reclusive writer wasn't in the phone book!), but when he knocks on his apartment door, Mann isn't too happy to see him and tells him he wants to be left alone after slamming the door in Ray's face. You could say that Mann is a bit of a grumpy old man. Ray tries again and asks him if he can have one minute of his time so Terrance agrees. Ray tells him, "You once wrote, 'There comes a time when all the cosmic tumblers have clicked into place and the universe opens itself up for a few seconds to show you what's possible.'" Terrance doesn't have time for this and pushes Ray out of his apartment. He notices that when Mann slammed the door, the door didn't quite latch, so he's able to go back inside. He puts one of his hands in his coat pocket and pretend it's a gun. Mann doesn't buy it at all and grabs a crowbar, telling Ray he's going to beat him until he leaves. Ray is able to evade the weapon when he tells Terrance he's a pacifist and the writer stops short of taking a swing at him. 

Ray tells him he has to take him to a baseball game later that evening and that "something is supposed to happen there tonight." When he brings up the interview Terrance gave years ago about him wanting to play baseball, Mann denies ever saying any of those things. Ray tells him if he comes to the game with him, he promises he'll never bother him again. 

Here are two fun facts when they go to watch the game at Fenway Park:

-We find out that two hot dogs and two beers cost $7 in 1988. What a deal! 

-Apparently, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were extras during this scene. Makes sense since they are from Boston. They would have been about fifteen or sixteen at this time. I tried looking for them, but yeah, I did't see them. 

While watching the game, Ray hears the voice again and it has a new message for him: "Go the distance." At first, I was thinking that was the most vague message, but we'll quickly find out what the disembodied voice means when Ray sees a message on the Jumbotron. It says "Archibald 'Moonlight' Graham" and lists some stats about him including that he's from Chisholm, Minnesota and played for the New York Giants in 1922. So I'm guessing that "go the distance" means he's supposed to drive to Chisholm and find this guy. 

He asks Terrance if he heard or saw anything, but Mann doesn't know what he's referring to. Ray tells him that he didn't need to come after all and they can leave now. When he drops him off outside of his apartment, Mann asks Ray if he got another message. Ray doesn't want to take up too much more of his time, so he says the message was "The man's already done enough, leave him alone" and shakes Terrance's hand. As he turns the car around, he has to stop quickly because Terrance is standing right in front of him in the street. He says "Moonlight Graham" and Ray knows that Terrance heard the voice and saw the stats about Graham on the screen. 

Apparently Ray didn't know what "go the distance" meant (gee, I thought it was pretty obvious - the most obvious of all the messages the voice says to him!) so Terrance has to explain to him that they need to find Moonlight Graham in Minnesota. He hops back into the van without even packing first! Dude, you're literally right in front of your apartment! Go upstairs and pack a suitcase! 

They travel 1,539 miles from Boston to Chisholm (which is a little over 200 miles north of Minneapolis; I Google mapped their route). When they reach the small northern town, they try looking up Archibald Graham in the phone book, but can't find anything. They go to the office of the Chisholm Tribune Press where an old lady who's probably been working there for over fifty years recognizes the name as Dr. Graham or "Doc" Graham as he was known. He had given up his baseball career to become a doctor. She has to break the news to the two men that he died in 1972. Terrane wonders what made them travel all this way to try to find a man sixteen years after he died. They interview some old guys at a bar who knew Dr. Graham. One of them tells them he "wore an overcoat, had white hair, and always carried an umbrella." In a few short minutes, we'll see why this scene is here. Though, I have to ask, don't most old people have white hair? We get another little detail that Doc's wife always wore blue and that the shops in town stocked blue hats because they kew he would buy one. Now you know this is a small town if everyone knows that! And just how many blue hats does one woman need? How many hats does one woman need? I looked up the population of Chisholm and 4,711 people lived there in 2022. I imagine it was half that or even lower in 1922! (Although back in the '90s, they were up to over 5,000!) 

Later that evening, Ray goes for a stroll and it appears he has been transported to 1972. He sees posters for Nixon, the movie marquee is promoting The Godfather, "one of this year's ten best" and he sees that the year on a license plate is 1972. I totally forgot about this time travel scene. Probably because it only lasts less then a minute, then it's never really talked about ever again. Out of the mist he sees an older gentleman with - get this - white hair and wearing an overcoat and carrying an umbrella. He is indeed Archibald "Moonlight" "Doc" Graham (Burt Lancaster in his final role) and he invites Ray to his office. 

We learn that he only got to play half an inning, but then left to become a doctor because he "couldn't bear another year in the minors." When Ray asks him what his wish is, he tells him it's to play baseball again, more specifically that he would "have liked to bat in the major leagues." When Ray tells him he can make his wish come true, Doc says he believes him, but that he can't go with him because he can't leave this town and that his dream "will have to stay a wish." 

Later, Ray discusses it with Terrance and the writer thinks they were sent to Chisholm to "find out if one inning can change the world" and if Moonlight had "gotten a hit, he might have stayed in baseball." 

 

Ray calls back his wife who had called earlier and she tells him she talked to the bank and they told her that they had just sold the deed on the farm to Mark and his partners and they're going to foreclose. He tells her he'll be home soon, but first he needs to take Mr. Mann back to Boston. Lucky for him, Terrance tells him he's coming with him. Can you imagine how out of the way that would have been for him if he had to drive him back to Boston? He would have had to drive 1,530 miles east, then almost 1,220 miles back to Iowa. Now, since he's already in Minnesota and Terrance wants to go back with him he only has to travel 422 miles south. (Can you tell I like using Google Maps?) 

While driving to Iowa, Ray tells Terrance that not everybody can see the ballpark, but technically that's not true. They can see the field, they just can't see the players. They come across a young hitchhiker and he's carrying all his belongings all bundled up in a cloth with a pole attached to it. It's almost as though he's from another time! The boy tells them he plays baseball and he's looking for a place to play and that he's "heard that all through the Midwest, they have towns with teams." Ray tells him they're going to a place just like that and he hops in the van. After Ray and Terrance introduce themselves, he says his name is Archie Graham. Ooh! The plot thickens! 

While Archie is napping in the backseat, we get some backstory about Ray's relationship with his father as Terrance asks him about it. He tells him his father never made it as a baseball player, so he tried to get him (Ray) "to make it for him" and Ray ended up despising the game and refused to play when he was 14. That's when he read Mann's book The Boat Rocker. There's a funny moment when Terrance gets all indignant and says "It's not my fault that you wouldn't play catch with your father!" Ray continues, saying he said "something awful" to his father and left home at 17. It is implied he never saw his father again because he wanted to return, but didn't know how, but was able to make it for the funeral. The terrible thing he said to his father was that he could never respect a man whose hero was a criminal. He's referring to Shoeless Joe Jackson and when Terrance tells him he wan't a criminal, Ray replies he said it because he was seventeen. He has deep guilt about it and is sad that his father never got to meet Annie or Karin. 

When they return to the farm, there are now more players out on the field so now they will be able to play real games instead of just practices. It is established right away that Terrance can see the players and he is astonished that Shoeless Joe Jackson is there. Archie is amazed by how many players he recognizes (but I sure don't) - Smokey Joe Wood, Mel Ott, and Gil Hodges are the names he utters. Yeah, the only old-school baseball players I know are Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and thanks to this movie, Shoeless Joe Jackson. Oh, and I've also heard of Lou Gehrig, but mostly because of the disease. 

The young Archie gets his older counterpart's dream of swinging the bat. He misses the first couple of times but after getting some advice from Joe, he smacks the ball and gets a home run....I think....I'm not really a sports person, so I really don't know how baseball works. 

The next day, while Ray is watching a game with his family and Terrance, Mark stops by. He walks right in the middle of the field, nearly getting hit by the ball the pitcher throws. It's funny when the players get really angry at him, but I'm not sure why they just didn't wait until he had passed by them. Also, if the ball had hit him, would he have felt it? Terrance quickly realizes that Mark can't see the players and when Mark sees Ray's got company, he asks "Who is this? Elvis?" He doesn't believe Ray when he tells him it's Terrance Mann and introduces himself as the Easter Bunny. Mark tells Ray that he has a deal to offer that will allow him to stay on the land. Karin interrupts them to tell her dad that they don't have to sell the farm; that people will come to watch the game and will pay for a ticket. I laughed when she says that people will decide to come to Iowa City for a vacation, but they'll think it's "really boring" (yeah, who would go there for vacation? And I can say that because I've been to Iowa many times and have relatives (including my parents) who are from/still live in Iowa), so they'll drive to the farm and pay to watch the games. I had to get out the old Google Maps again....Iowa City is about an hour and a half away from Dyersville. 

Mark isn't listening to her, but Terrance is! This is when we get James Earl Jones' "People will come" speech and he waxes poetic about baseball and how "the one constant through all the years has been baseball." As he's giving his speech, the music starts swelling and he walks out on the field and all the players stop what they're doing, but this time they're more in awe and not irritated like they were with Mark. They slowly walk closer to him. I did laugh when he said, "They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom." That would be another great welcome sign for Iowa:

Welome to Iowa

You've come here for reasons you can't even fathom

Though the heaven line is much more iconic and synonymous with this movie. At one point he says, "Oh...people will definitely come." When he said "oh", he kinda held it for a few seconds and I thought he was going to break into "Oh, beautiful, for spacious skies..." James Earl Jones would appear as an ex-ballplayer (and the owner of Hercules) four years later in The Sandlot and I have no doubt the director/writer hired him for that role because of this movie. 

Mark tells Ray he'll lose everything and will be evicted, but Ray tells him he's not signing anything. Karin ends up falling off the top of the bleachers and hitting her head. This is because Mark had grabbed her after she tells him there are people out on the field and he accuses Ray of turning his daughter into a "space cadet", but when he puts her down, she ends up falling instead. I think it would have made more sense if she had just accidentally fallen. 

Annie starts running back to the house to call for help, but Ray sees young Archie Graham coming forward and he tells his wife to "wait". Please, like any mother would "wait" for some ghost doctor to help their child. But she does and he does. When he steps off the baseball field, he turns into the old man doctor and is able to save the young girl who was unconscious because she had a hot dog lodged in her throat. Mark is able to see him, so did he just see some random old guy materialize right in front of him? He is also now able to see the other ballplayers and asks when they got there. 

Everyone's had enough excitement for one day, so Joe tells Ray that they'll see him tomorrow, then asks, "Do you wanna come with with us?" Ray thinks he is talking to him, but he is asking Terrance who is standing next to Ray. Ray is a bit upset he wasn't the one invited. He says he built this field and asks, "What's in it for me?" Terrance tells him there's a reason they chose him, "just as there was a reason they chose you and this field." He then admits he did give the interview about Ebbets Field, the one that sent Ray to Boston to find him. He says there's something out there and he'll write about it because that's what he does. 

Terrance disappeared into the corn field and before Joe leaves, he says to Ray, "If you build it, he will come" and nods at the catcher who turns out to be John Kinsella, Rays' dad. I think he does actually have a line earlier in the movie (when the group is playing baseball), but nothing is ever given away about him being Ray's dad and since his face is always covered by a mask, Ray has never noticed until now. 

Ray and John introduce each other and I'm not sure if John knows Ray is his son. (Ray just says his first name.) Ray introduces him to Annie and Karin and almost tells Karin he's her grandfather, but instead introduces him as John. Annie says they're going to let the two of them talk and takes Karin back to the house. John asks Ray, "Is this heaven?" and Ray replies, "It's Iowa." John says, "I could have sworn it was heaven" and when Ray asks if there is a heaven, John tells him there is. They say goodnight and as John walks away, Ray calls out, "Hey Dad, you want to have a catch?" and John replies, "I'd like that." Considering that was his reply, he would have to know that Ray is his son or otherwise he'd be like "What did you call me?" 

The movie ends with a long line of cars lined up as far as the eye can see waiting to see the game. They're not even ready for all those people because they only have one set of bleachers! And what about all the food they're going to need?

I've been to the filming location in Dyerville and I just remember the baseball field being smaller than it looks in the movie. People were playing baseball, but I was more interested in the cornfield! 

Get those Nail Breakers!

Ladybugs

Director: Sidney J. Furie

Cast: Rodney Dangerfield, Jonathan Brandis, Jackee Harry, Vinessa Shaw, Ilene Graff

Released: March 27, 1992

When I reviewed She's the Man a little over a year ago, I ended my review with this:

I don't think this movie would fare very well today. It's not very woke...... That said, this movie has to be much better than Ladybugs, that movie where Jonathan Brandis dresses as a girl and plays on the all girls soccer team that Rodney Dangerfield coaches. I've never seen it (don't think I'm missing anything), but it seems to send a very sexist message saying girls need the help of a strong boy to win sports! Again, I've never seen it, so maybe it's an empowering movie, who knows, but somehow I highly doubt it. At least She's the Man is above that...but I don't know how much higher the bar goes! 

Okay, so I saw Ladybugs and it is NOT an empowering movie. SHOCKING, I know. It's a terrible movie. I definitely wasn't missing anything. While it is pretty sexist, the boy dressing up as a girl isn't even the most problematic part. No, that was just more stupid than anything else. But before I dive into my review, let me preface this by saying that I usually watch movies I review twice: first I just watch them straight through, then the second time I turn on the subtitles, I take notes, I write down quotes, sequences of events, anything notable. When I watched Ladybugs the first time, it was free on Amazon Prime, but when I went back a few days later ready to take notes, you had to pay to watch it and I was like, Nope! I'm not paying for this dreck! I'd be willing to watch it again for free, but I will NOT be paying to watch it again! So just keep that in mind as I go through this review. I may not remember everything that happens or have the exact quotes or remember how events transpire, but really, does anyone really care? Really? No? Good, okay, so let's get started.

So while I've been aware of this movie for a long time, I never saw it until recently. I guess it was a movie I never really wanted to see, even as a kid and that would have been the more desired time for me to see it. I have to wonder if I would have liked it as a kid and I don't think I would have because the movie is mostly focused on Rodney Dangerfield's character, Chester (terrible, terrible name...don't name your kid "Chester"). Maybe if the movie was more focused on the girls' soccer team or Matthew, the Jonathan Brandis character, I would have liked it more. 

Probably one of the reasons why I was never inclined to watch this movie because I was never a Jonathan Brandis fangirl. And considering the tragic fate that happened to him, I'm glad I wasn't. I can admit he was cute and I can see why all the pre-teen girls from the '90s loved him, but I just never watched anything he was in. The only thing I may have seen is The Never Ending Story II, but I just may be confusing that one with the first movie and I haven't seen that one since I was a literal child (that's a movie I always intended to watch and review, but then I got distracted by other movies I'd rather watch and review), but I never saw Sidekicks or this one (until now, at least). I was mostly familiar with him from SeaQuest DSV, a show I never watched because I was watching the competition, The New Adventures of Superman, with Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher. All I know about SeaQuest was that there was a talking dolphin and Jonathan Brandis was in it. So I just assumed he did all his movies during his time on the show, but imagine my surprise when I found out SeaQuest premiered in 1993 and this movie came out in '92, so was he already popular when he did SeaQuest and that's how he got cast? Because I honestly don't remember. I have a feeling it was SeaQuest that made him popular because he's not really in Ladybugs that much...he has nowhere near as much screen time as Dangerfield and I feel like if the movie producers knew they could get more pre-teen girls in the seats, they'd be focusing more on the Brandis character. 

I have to wonder who is this movie for. If they're trying to get the Brandis fangirls, they're going to be bored through most of it and probably not going to enjoy looking at Rodney Dangerfield and his bug eyes. (So did he get cast in this movie because it's called LadyBUGS and they just immediately thought of him?) Also, the actual girls on the soccer team, aside from a couple of them, get no screen time at all. This movie is 80% Dangerfield, 15% Brandis, and 5% soccer girls. 

The basic premise of this movie is that Rodney Dangerfield is trying to get a promotion at his job (he was 70 when he made this movie, so how old is his character supposed to be and why is he still working?) so when he finds out that his boss's daughter's soccer team, the Ladybugs, needs a coach for the season, he volunteers, saying he knows a lot about soccer because he used to play, but of course he doesn't and he's never played. He's told if he can get the team to the championship, he will be promoted. So that's how he gets roped into being the coach. Before he goes in to talk to his boss about a possible promotion, there's an extremely uncomfortable and awkward scene where he's "flirting" with the secretary, who is this librarian-type woman in her 60s and he greets her with "Hey, sexy" and tells her can't believe she never got married and how he bets "there's still heat in her furnace" or something gross like that and that she's just his "type". Yeah. I know, right? Oh, boy. Something tells me if Rodney Dangerfield were still alive today, he would be cancelled! There's a lot of very uncomfortable scenes like this (some even worse!), so stay tuned!

When Chester goes to meet the team the next day, we find out that only two girls are returning and the rest are new (and seemed to have never played soccer before). So where did the girls from last year go? Did they age out? (I would guess these girls to be about fourteen). Did they not want to be on the team anymore? I guess we need girls that suck because that's how we get Jonathan Brandis on the team. As his assistant coach, he has his assistant (I honestly don't know what he does for a job), Julie (played by national treasure Jackee Harry (pretend there's an accent over the first e, "Jack-ay")). The day of their first game, she brings a book that is basically Soccer For Dummies and starts reading it on page one. Um, why didn't they go over this BEFORE the game (or the first meet, really?) There's this scene where Julie is eating a sub sandwich and the way Jackee chose to eat it was very interesting to say the least. Instead of starting from one end to eat it, she eats it from the top.

Most of the time, when we meet a kids sports team in a movie, while not every player may get equal screen time, we usually know their first (and sometimes last!) name(s) and they at least get one line and have some kind of character trait. The Mighty Ducks is a good example of this. Yes, it did have two sequels, but all thirteen players in the first movie had first and last names and all were given lines. This does not happen in Ladybugs. There are five girls who have lines and are given names. I looked up to see how many people are on a soccer team and it's usually 11: ten people in the field and one goalie. Now I did not count to see how many girls were on the team, but when they're all huddled together, you see girls who don't get any lines or you have no idea what their names are. Why don't we meet the girls we do get to know?

The first is Kimberly (Vinessa Shaw...she's probably the only person in the world who spells her name like that...even my spellcheck wanted to "right" it back to "Vanessa"), who is the boss's daughter. She's a terrible soccer player because she kicks the ball way too high and it goes over the goal, but isn't a powerful kicker somebody you want in soccer? IDK, I'm no Mia Hamm (literally the only female soccer player I can name!), so what do I know? If they could just train her to kick it in the goal, she'd be set. We find out that Matthew, the Jonathan Brandis character, has a crush on her and this causes some slight mishaps and awkward moments. There's a scene where he has a fantasy of them running into each other's arms and she's wearing a bikini version of her soccer uniform (red with black polka dots) and she's running in slow motion and it's a little uncomfortable considering the actress was 14/15 when she filmed this. In this dream sequence they are eating a "fancy" dinner which consists of the world's most bland hamburgers: they're just meat on a bun. There's no cheese, lettuce, tomato, ANYTHING on these burgers that would make them more enticing to eat. It's like craft services couldn't be bothered to get anything to add to the burgers to make them look mouth watering. Isn't this supposed to be a dream sequence? Wouldn't you want the most delicious looking food? But I digress...

Then there's Nancy who was on the team last year (so was Kimberly, I believe). She's the only one who seems to know what she's doing. Julie claims this is because she's black and all the greatest sports stars  - in baseball, basketball, boxing, and football - are black. Chester scoffs at this and ask her what about hockey. She makes a face like, Okay, I'll give you that one. And you think the joke would end there, but then he goes on to include badminton, fox hunting, and fencing. Yeah, that just got really awkward really fast. There's also another awkward racial joke when Chester is in the elevator standing between Julie and Bess, his fiancée (Ilene Graff aka the mom from Mr. Belvedere). He's holding a scrapbook with details about their wedding and an older woman who gets on the elevator mistakes him for getting married to Julie and tells them how brave they are. I did have to laugh when Julie muses what their children would look like.

Carmelita Chu is the butterfly girl. She's a little space cadet who loves butterflies and gets easily distracted by them when she sees them. This problem will get solved later when Matthew puts a bunch of butterfly stickers on a soccer ball and she just chases the ball down the field. I did laugh when she makes a goal and Julie was cheering her on and yelling, "Chu! Chu! Chu! Chu!" and it sounded like she was sneezing. 

Sally Anne Wellfelt (terrible last name, but it's surprisingly not the worst of the last names of the girls on this team!) is the team floozy. According to her, she likes to shop, cute boys, paint her nails, cute boys, go to the mall, cute boys, talk on the phone, cute boys, etc. When Matthew reveals he is a boy, she is making the biggest googly eyes at him. There is a stupid, but funny moment when they're playing the championship game (yes, they make it that far, because, of course they do) and she breaks a nail and starts crying about it and it motivates her to score a goal. The spectators are shouting, "Get those nail breakers!" The coach on the other team is so enraged that he not only makes his own players get down and give him twenty push ups, but also the people watching the game.

Wikipedia tells me there's a girl named Tina Velez (I assume she was on the soccer team), but I have no recollection of this person at all. 

Last, but not least, we have Penny Pester. THIS is the girl with the horrible last name. Why are we giving this girl that name when we already have a character named Chester? So stupid. Penny is this really socially awkward nerdy, non-athletic girl. She wears glasses that are held into place with a band and her frizzy hair is held back into a ponytail. When she reveals to her coach that boys don't like her because she's not pretty, we get an extremely awkward scene where he takes off her hair clip to see her with her hair down and takes off her glasses. He tells her that if he were younger, he'd ask her out. Um, eww. But it's even worse when he says that she probably wouldn't say yes, and she replies, "Yes, I would, Coach Chester" and proceeds to give him a kiss on the cheek. Ugh! Girl, don't lie! Also, when he did that She's All That makeover on her, she looked worse because her eyes are all squinty without the glasses. There's a point during the championship game when she takes off her glasses and takes out her ponytail claiming, "This is for you, Coach Chester!" before scoring a point. Um, how the hell does that help her? Her hair is just in her way (the actress kept pushing it out of her face as she was running down the field) and I would assume she would need her glasses to SEE! 

So, yes, those are all the girls on the soccer team that we meet. Chester decides they need a ringer so he recruits the son of his fiancee. For some reason, a younger woman (the actress was 45 when she filmed this) has decided to marry somebody who looks like Rodney Dangerfield, has a dead end job, and blatantly sexually harasses and ogles other women. We see numerous occasions where he is straight up staring at other women in a blatantly sexual way. WHAT does she see in him? Her son, of course, is Matthew, who was on a soccer team, but got kicked off because he acted up in school or was failing one of his classes. Who knows, I don't remember. At first, with good reason, Matthew is reluctant to dress up as a girl and join the team, but when he finds out that his crush, Kimberly, is on the team, he decides to help out. 

Kimberly has to be the dumbest girl on earth because she's had two recent run-ins with Matthew and he's literally only wearing a wig (that's pretty much the same color as his own hair), so you'd think she would recognize him. Even though she is super rich (her house has a racketball court, for God's sake!), she goes to the same public school as Matthew. In one scene, Matthew and his friend are walking behind her at school and his friend is telling him he should ask her out and tell her that he likes all her "parts". I am shocked that she didn't hear them talking about her because they are within earshot of her when they're saying all this. They go outside and his friend throws a football which lands near her and she sees Matthew and tells him, "Nice catch." Then, when Chester brings Matthew to one of the soccer practices, he's sitting in the stands and Kimberly does one of her infamous kicks and the ball lands near him and she runs up to grab it from him. So she's seen him just as himself twice now. Later he will reveal his true self to her and she is SHOCKED! Girl, why are you so stupid? It's a good thing you're rich and pretty, damn! 

The fact that they put no effort in him being being a girl at all makes me laugh. At least Amanda Bynes in She's the Man put some effort into it. Yeah, she had that weird voice she did and it did change a few times, but I will give her a lot more credit. Brandis does not even attempt a girl's voice. He doesn't have a super deep voice, but it is noticeably male. He does have high-pitched girly voice during a scene where Kimberly has come to visit "Martha" (Matthew's female alter ego) at "her" house. (For some reason, Kimberly thinks of "Martha" as her best friend even though we've seen no evidence of them being that close). I have to wonder if that scene was filmed first and they tried the girly voice out and they decided not to do it anymore because it didn't work. Because it seems weird he would talk normally when he's a girl, but then later on in the movie, have that high-pitched tone to his voice. I don't know. This movie is so stupid. So during that scene, his mom comes home and, of course, she has no idea about the charade, so while Kimberly is in the living room and his mom is in the kitchen (he's closed the door to the rooms), he has to switch back and forth between Martha and Matthew and put on a wig when he's Martha. You know, it's like the restaurant scene in Mrs. Doubtfire (which, oddly, came out a year later....do you think this was the inspiration for that scene? Nah!) The way he slides down the stairs to his basement room is one of the best things about this movie. Seriously.

After his first practice as Martha (and none of the other girls have any clue. They're just as dumb as Kimberly), Chester tells Matthew he needs to learn to be more feminine, that he can't be so aggressive and talk about how he needs to take a leak. So we never actually see him try to get in touch with his feminine side; the only thing they really do is shop for a dress. This entire scene is so flipping' stupid and nonsensical and will later turn into a dark, disturbing moment. So they go to a boutique and Chester tells the saleswoman he needs a dress and when she asks him what size, he turns to Matthew and asks him what size he is. The woman is confused, but Chester explains it away as the dress being for his twin sister and they're the same size. Then he wants Matthew to try on the dress. But why? Why does Matthew need to even wear a dress? He's only Martha when he's on the soccer field, so "she" only needs to wear the uniform. Yes, yes, I know Kimberly comes to visit "Martha" at "her" house so Matthew puts on the dress then. But, still. So when Chester and Matthew are in the dressing room, oh boy, things get misconstrued and we get a joke about sexual abuse! Oh, yay! Oh, dear. Oh, dear, oh dear, oh dear. This old lady and her granddaughter are waiting outside the dressing rooms (I guess there's only one dressing room?) and they overhear an interesting conversation between a man and what they think is a young girl. Chester and Matthew are facing each other (so the old lady only sees their feet) and Chester is putting the wig on Matthew. Matthew is complaining that it's "too tight" and "it hurts" and Chester's telling him to hold still and "not to tell his mother about this" because she'll kill him. The old lady is just besides herself. Now, I think if a little girl was actually being raped in a dressing room, there would be a lot more screaming and crying and the police would be called (hopefully!), yeah...that's pretty horrible. Matthew just sounds like an irritated teen, NOT like somebody who is having something horrendous done to them. Chester continues to be a creep to young girls when he comes out of the dressing room, sees the little girl with the older woman and proceeds to caress her on the cheek and say, "Oh, what a cute little thing. What's your name?" This causes the old woman to faint in horror. Dude, know your boundaries! We'll also get a weird scene later on where Chester is talking to a bar tender about how how he dressed up his girlfriend's son in a dress and wanted him to "play with him." Um, maybe, clarify what you're talking about or maybe just not talk about this at all? Of course the man is enraged and kicks him out of the bar. 

So far we've had racist jokes, sexual harassment jokes, sexual abuse jokes, what else are we missing? Oh, yes, homophobic jokes! So, in a scene that really does not need to be in the movie at ALL, Chester and Bess are looking at a house and outside they see a man riding a bike with a little kid in the back, in one of those booster bike seats. Bess comments how cute that is and Chester makes a "joke" that the kid is going to turn out gay because he's just staring at his dad's butt. Yeah, not funny. Not even clever. It feels like Dangerfield thought of that on the fly and they thought it would be funny material for the movie? 

Matthew has other close calls to being found out that he's not actually -gasp!- a girl! He and the other girls are invited to Kimberly's house. He calls Chester to pick him up because the girls have decided to go skinny dipping. WHY skinny dipping? Why not just swimming. I'm pretty sure if he was in a swimsuit, the girls would notice something was amiss! So Chester, dressed in a dress and hat with a veil over it, comes to pick up "Martha". You'd have to be really stupid to not recognize Rodney Dangerfield in drag. Just saying. His boss has an attractive wife who is wearing a short skirt that day and of course Chester, dressed as a woman, ogles her when she bends over to pick something up. I'm surprised (and disappointed, frankly) that Matthew didn't notice this and report this to his mother. His mom deserves better than this creep. Still trying to figure out why she is with him (apart from it being convenient to the plot). 

Bess finds out what Chester has been doing and becomes angry with him, so their relationship is on the rocks (oh no!) and Matthew, who has helped the Ladybugs make it to the championship game as Martha can no longer play with them. This is when he reveals his true self to Kimberly by taking off his wig (don't worry, he wasn't wearing a dress) and she shrieks, "Oh my God!" He encourages Kimberly, who has been kicked off the team due to her father making Chester do so because she sucks so much, to go to the game. Yeah, this douche made his employee kick his own daughter off the soccer team. Matthew and Kimberly go to the soccer game where Matthew reveals his true self to the other girls (who are also SOOO shocked!) and Chester puts Kimberly back in the game, despite his boss's threats to fire him. But Kimberly gets a penalty shot and ends up winning the game, yay. She and Matthew also start dating and Chester gets his promotion and gets back together with Bess, so double yay. (In case you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic cuz I could really care less!) 

In the end, Chester doesn't learn his lesson about cheating. We see him on a bus with boys dressed in baseball uniforms. When they get to their destination, the coach of the opposing team tells him he heard a rumor that he dressed up a boy as a girl to play on the soccer team, but Chester vehemently denies this. Cue to the boys stepping off the bus, all dressed in wigs, posing as girls. 

You know what would have made this movie better? Or at least more passable? Get rid of Rodney Dangerfield and have it be Jackee who needs the promotion. Maybe Matthew is the son of her friend or she sees him and recruits him. Maybe you get more dynamic between the girls on the team and you get rid of all the stupid and offensive jokes that don't move the story anywhere. 

Ten Favorite and Least Favorite Super Bowl Half Time Performances

In the past week, I've been watching all the Super Bowl (should that be one word?) half time shows since 1990 and thought I would share my ten favorite performances and my ten LEAST favorite. I was going to rank all of them, but honestly that would take way too long, plus I wouldn't know where to place the ones that were in the middle. You can find these on YouTube.

Let's get the bad over with and start with my ten worst/least favorite Super Bowl half time shows from least offensive to downright awful:

10. 1994 - This one had a country theme with Clint Black, Tanya Tucker, Travis Tritt, and the Judds. This one is fine and everyone sounds good (I love the song Wynona Judd sings), but it's just not my cup of tea. There's a lots of square dancing and yee-hawing going on for my taste. I'm surprised they haven't had another country themed half time show with more modern country artists. (Well, I guess Shania Twain played a couple of her songs in 2003). I could have sworn that Carrie Underwood had performed when she first became big, but I must be thinking of another sporting event. I would love to see Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert headline a Super Bowl half time show and I'm not just saying that because they're my two favorite country artists...actually, that's exactly why I'm saying it! It's interesting to note that this is the first SB half time show (well, since 1990, but possibly ever...who knows) that takes place at night.

9. 2004 - This was the infamous half time show headlined by Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake where the "wardrobe malfunction" happened. That's not reason why I put it on my least favorite list. Besides what happened at the end, does anyone remember the actual show? Did you know there were other acts besides those two there? Jessica Simpsons introduces the show (but doesn't even perform, ha!), Janet sings one of her songs, then P. Diddy sings a couple of his songs, then Nelly comes in and sings "Hot In Here", then more P. Diddy, then Kid Rock sings a couple of his songs including "Cowboy", then Janet sings "Rhythm Nation", then we end with Justin singing "Rock Your Body" and we all know how that ended! I had no idea Justin was only there at the very end. This is a very good example of too many cooks in the kitchen. They should have just had Janet headline the show; at the very least drop two or three of the other acts! It was just so chaotic. If the nip slip hadn't happened, nobody would ever remember this show. So after this show, for a long time they only had classic rock "safe" acts like Paul McCartey, Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, etc. They did let Justin come back to headline the show in 2018.

8. 1995 - This one had performances by Patti LaBelle and Tony Bennett and also had a skit where Indiana Jones (NOT Harrison Ford so don't get too excited) and Marion Ravenwood are trying to retrieve a trophy from a temple. Disney produced the show and I guess this was supposed to promote a new attraction? Its hilarious because you can tell the actors for Indy and Marion pre-recorded their dialogue earlier and they played it later because you see close ups of the actors and they are not even talking while you hear the characters talking! So hilarious! It's just super weird. Patti LaBelle sounds great; she kills it on "New Attitude". Tony Bennett is a weird choice; he's not exactly the performer you want to see at the Super Bowl. At the end they both sing "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" from The Lion King. (Remember, this was produced by Disney!)  None of this is coherent at all; it's just one big mess.

7. 2011 - This one was headlined by the Black Eyed Peas. I give them an E for Effort, but it just didn't come together well. The sound was terrible for one thing. I love "I Gotta Feeling" but that needs to be LOUD and it was....muted. I think when they were singing "Pump it! Louder!" they were trying to tell the sound guy something! Slash from Guns N Roses make a guest appearance and Fergie sings "Sweet Child of Mine". She sounds super weird and it's obvious she's trying to emulate Axl Rose because she sounded normal when she was singing her own songs. Usher also drops by (literally!) and performs. When they perform "Where is the Love" there's an arial shot of what is supposed to be the word "love" lit up in red lights, only half of the v isn't even lit. Oops. This show, as the kids say, was not lit.

6. 2019 - This one was headlined by Maroon 5. I like some of their songs okay, but I'm not a huge fan or anything. If I never hear "Girls Like You" again for the rest of my life, I would be okay with that, but I guarantee I will hear it at least ten times next week!  They don't really have songs that you can jam to. Adam Levine doesn't have the strongest voice and his stage presence isn't the best. Oh, imagine that...he sings that song and he's joined by a choir. Look, I understand why there was a choir when Madonna performed "Like I Prayer" at the Super Bowl in 2012, but for this song? Really?  He's joined by Travis Scott who I'm not familiar with. He's a rapper and I had to laugh because he had to be bleeped about four or five times. Big Boi (from Outkast) also joins the stage and he's wearing this huge fur pimp coat and all I can think of is how hot he must be in that thing! This was in Atlanta. I  rolled my eyes so much when Adam took off his shirt during "Moves Like Jagger" and was attempting this sexy dance that was just hilarious. I read that the FCC was sent 55 complaints because he was showing his nipples. Obviously these had to be trolls, but I love that 55 people out there took the time to do that. Oh, and all this time I thought he was saying "Shut up" when he was actually saying "Sugar". Ohh...who knew? The audience must have gotten strict instructions not to touch the lead singer of Maroon 5 because there are times when he gets very close to the stage and his adoring fans are waving their hands near him, but they don't touch him. He also doesn't high five or shake hands with people which kind of makes him a douche. Beyonce, Bono, Justin Timberlake, and Chris Martin (and those are the ones I can remember) don't have a problem touching hands or giving high fives with their fans, so what's his problem? Overall, this just felt uninspiring.

5. 1990 - I guess this was okay for its time, but it was a bit boring. Sine this was 1990, it was before they booked really big acts. This one commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Peanuts comic strip so there are people dressed up as Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy, etc and marching in a parade. There's also a nod to New Orleans with a huge riverboat float since it took place in New Orleans. There's one cute moment where an animated Woodstock is flying in front of a tuba and gets blown off the screen when the tube player plays a long note. It was fine, but we've certainly come a long ways!

4. 1997 - This one was called Blues Brothers Bash and had actors from the movies performing - Dan Aykroyd, John Goodman, and Jim Belushi. I don't think Jim Belushi was in either movie, but his brother was in the first one so I guess that's why he got an invite? Blues Brothers 2000 came out in 1998 so I guess they were promoting the movie? I've never seen either movie and so I really don't care and this performance bored me. I'm sure my dad loved it because he likes the first movie at least. I did know a few of the songs. There are also performances by James Brown and ZZ Top. While looking into this particular halftime show, I found out that a stuntwoman had died during a rehearsal while bungee jumping. Obviously, they took away the bungee jumping portion of the show. Can you imagine if that had happened during the live show? I don't know about you, but I'd much rather see a women's nipple than someone die on live TV!

So the remaining three are just pure crap.

3. 1991 - This one had an all kids theme which means performing kids, singing kids, dancing kids. :::Groans:::: I'm sure the adults in the audience loved this. There was a nice sentiment behind it as it was dedicated to the men and women serving in the Persian Gulf. Ironically, kids probably didn't even get to see the show as a special report on the Gulf War was shown instead and the show was later aired after the game so by that time kids are in bed! This was produced by Disney (the Disney produced half time shows are the worst) so there were appearances by Minnie Mouse, Goofy, and Chip 'n Dale. There's a solo by a blond boy with a bowl haircut singing "Wind Beneath My Wings" and he must have been the son or relative of one of the producers because he is terrible. What? They couldn't find a kid who could actually SING? Somewhere he is now in his late 30s/early 40s (guessing) and he probably cursed the day YouTube was invented because now everybody can see this. But damn, then they have kids representing all 50 states and all have parents serving in the Gulf War and that was a nice moment. A video message from George and Barbara is played about the brave men and women in the Persian Gulf. So amongst all the cheesiness, there were some nice moments. To conclude the show, New Kids on the Block (oh, goody) come out and perform "Step by Step." It is hilarious watching all the kids go crazy. They also sing a song called "This One's For the Children" which I'm not familiar with and it's as sappy as you would think it is. They are all sitting on steps and are holding a small child (like four or five years old). It is so weird.

2. 2000 - Once again we have a terrible Disney produced halftime show. This time the theme was Millennial Celebration. Even though this is better produced than the 1991 show and even though it has more star power with Christina Aguilera, Enrique Iglesias, Phil Collins, and Toni Braxton, I ranked this lower than the one because at least in 1991 they didn't know yet. This is 2000. They should know by now what makes a great show and this isn't it. First of all, you have Christina and Enrique singing some sappy song about "celebrating the future hand in hand" that was obviously written just for this moment. GAG. If I were there, I would want to sing along with their songs that I know! Give me some "Genie in a Bottle" or "Come on Over" or "What a Girl Wants" or whatever hit songs Enrique had at that time. This played more like something you would see at the Opening Ceremony at the Olympics. Phil Collins sings one of his songs from Tarzan because, you know, Disney. Then Toni Braxton sings a sappy song that was written for the show and is later joined by the others. I think this was the last half time show Disney produced and thank God for that.

1. 1992 - Dear God, what the eff was this? This was just awful. The theme was "Winter Magic" and it's just an absolute mess. The entire field is full of dancers and singers and musicians and where would you even know where to look if you were in the stadium? After singing a dorky song about "winter magic", they start singing CHRISTMAS songs and there's a "dance" number to The Nutcracker.  In January. What. The. Actual. F---?  Kids do a terrible rap about Frosty the Snowman. It's way worse than anything the kids do from the 1991 show. There are some famous people as they have Brian Boitano (what WOULD Brian Boitano do, indeed) and Dorothy Hamill ice skating to "One Moment in Time" (NOT sung by Whitney Houston so don't get too excited) on tiny circles of ice. The song is sung by a man and woman, but they never show them so you have no idea who is singing or where it's coming from. The rinks are so small they really can't do more than twirl around. There's also a terrible (and hilarious) rendition of Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now". Gloria Estefan shows up and sings a couple of her hits. She sounds fine, but the theme is "Winter Magic" and Minneapolis is the setting. Cuz when I think of WINTER and MINNESOTA, I think of Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. Yeah....God, what a TERRIBLE show. How PISSED do you think the audience was here (and during the '91 and '90 half time show) when they found out Michael Jackson would be performing at the '93 halftime show? Hahahaha...

Okay, now it's time for my ten best/favorite half time shows.

10. 2007 - So I couldn't find an entire video of when Prince performed, but his performance of "Purple Rain" while it was raining is pretty epic. However this gets last place out of my best list because I wasn't able to watch his performances of the other songs (thought I saw some snippets of "Let's Get Crazy" and that was good, too) and I noticed "When Doves Cry" wasn't on his playlist and the is the best Prince song ever. Well, at least it's my favorite!

9. 2017 - This one was headlined by Lady Gaga. She sings a lot of her big hits after she propels down from the stadium roof. Don't get me wrong, she was great, but I kind of expected more from her show, you know? It's Lady Gaga for crying out loud. It would have been awesome if Beyonce showed up while she was singing "Telephone" (that doesn't happen...but I guess Beyonce had just performed the year before). My favorite moment was when she performed "Million Reasons" at the piano. I love the part when she says hi to her parents. That was cute. She ends the show with "Bad Romance" which is a song I don't really care for. I wish she had ended with "Edge of Glory" (she gives us a little teaser of it at the beginning) because that's my favorite Gaga song.

8. 2014 - This one was headlined by Bruno Mars singing all his hits, then he was later joined by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and performed "Give It Away" with them. It was a fun, energetic performance. He ends the show by singing his most famous song (yes?), "Just the Way You Are" and a crapton of fireworks go off as he sings the last note.

7. 2001- This one was headlined by Aerosmith! And N'Sync! And Britney Spears! And Mary J. Blige! And Nelly! The whole thing is so perfectly 2001. So this particular show has nostalgia elements for me because it's the first Super Bowl half time show that I remember. It's possible that I watched ones prior to this, but I don't remember any of them if I did. You have N'sync performing "Bye Bye Bye"! Then Aerosmith performs "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing"! Then N'sync performs "It's Gonna Be Me"! (And 20 year old Justin Timberlake shoots fireworks out of his gloves - heh, he had Power Gloves). Then Aerosmith performs "Jaded!" Then they perform "Walk this Way" with N'Sync and that's when Britney and Mary J. Blige come out and they start singing. Then Nelly comes out and starts rapping. There were so many damn people singing at once the camera had no idea where to go. Let's get a shot of Britney and Justin! Let's get a shot of Mary J. Blige singing next to Steven Tyler! Let's get a shot of Nelly! Let's get a shot of one of the N'Sync guys who isn't Justin! Wait go back to Britney! So I read that this was the first half time show where they allowed people to come up near the stage, but it looks like there were people surrounding Michael Jackson' stage when he performed in '93, so maybe this was the year when they started doing it regularly?

6. 1993 - So after terrible halftime shows from 1992, 1991, 1990, and let's face it, probably since the beginning of the Super Bowl's history, this has to be the first truly great half time show. They got one of the biggest pop stars, Michael Jackson, to headline the show. Like I mentioned before, you know the people who attended the '90, '91, and '92 Super Bowls were pissed! He pops out of the stage and literally just stands there for 90 seconds and the crowd is going insane. The first part is great cuz he sings bangers like "Billie Jean" and "Black and White." During the latter, people in the field are holding large squares that are white on one side, and black on the other and they flip them around. Oh, 1993, you are so adorable. The second part becomes a little schmaltzy when a children's choir sings "We Are the World" while cards in the stadium are turned over to reveal crude drawings of children. He ends by singing "Heal the World" which is a nice song, but c'mon, I want to hear  something with a little more oomph like "Man in the Mirror" or "Beat It" or "Bad" or "Smooth Criminal" or "The Way You Make Me Feel". Still, pretty good show. I had to laugh that they shot off fireworks as this took place during the day.

5. 2013 - Twenty years after Michael Jackson headlined the show, Beyonce headlined it. And boy did she deliver. She performed all her hits starting with "Crazy in Love" while strutting down the stage. Of course the best part was when Kelly Roland and Michelle Williams popped out of the stage ala Michael Jackson and performed "Bootylicious", "Independent Women" (loved the Charlie's Angels pose they did at the end) and "Single Ladies" with their former Destiny's Child member. Beyonce ends the show with "Halo". I laughed when she's kneeling down very close to the audience and someone just reaches out and touches her leg. I'm sure whoever that person is they still haven't washed their hand since that day! Love you, Bey!

4. 2020 - This is the most recent halftime show headlined by Shakira and J. Lo, but you probably already knew that. To me, this one was come for Shakira, stay for J. Lo's daughter. Look, J. Lo was fine. She did great. She looked amazing, of course. She has some catchy songs (I hadn't heard "Waiting For Tonight" in forever so when she started singing the beginning of it, I was like, "This sounds familiar...oh, THAT song!"), but I just don't think she's the strongest singer. Of course her voice isn't the reason why people are watching her if you know what I mean! Shakira has the more impressive dance moves and she has some bangers like "She Wolf", "Whenever,  Wherever", and "Hips Don't Lie." I read that after this performance there were 4,000 downloads of "Whenever, Wherever" in the next 24 hours. That's awesome...but these people didn't already have that song? What the hell?  I've had the album it was on since 2001 or 2002 when it came out! I thought J. Lo's daughter was super cute and sounded great. Very entertaining, energetic show.

3. 2016 - This one was headlined by Coldplay with special guests Bruno Mars and Beyonce who have already gotten mentions on this list. This one is particularly notable because it's one of the more recent shows to take place during the day. Since they really couldn't use lights or laser, they use a lot of color with people marching out with large paper flowers. The show begins with Chris Martin crouched in the field singing "Viva La Vida" while the crowd runs out towards the stage. I'm sure they told the crowd not to trample the lead singer of Coldplay. They also utilize kids playing violins during that song. You can tell Chris Martin has no rhythm because he just sort of hops back and forth and jumps up and down, but that's what makes him so endearing. And no hate here because I'm exactly the same way. (I'm not saying I'm endearing; I'm saying I have no rhythm, just to be clear!) After singing a couple more of their songs (including "Para! Para! Para! Paradise! Whoooo-oooooooo-ah!"), Bruno Mars sings "Uptown Funk" (the best song of the last decade, yes it's true) and Beyonce sings "Formation". There's kind of a friendly showdown between the two of them, then Chris Martin joins them and they sing "Uptown Funk" again. The show ends on a sentimental note as Coldplay performs "Fix You" while moments of past half time shows are shown on a screen. This was the 50th Super Bowl so that's what they were celebrating. I noticed they didn't include any images from the infamous 2004 half time show!

2. 2002 - This one was headlined by U2.  Obviously it was the first Super Bowl after 9/11 and they were lucky they got a band like U2 to perform because the previous year's line up probably wouldn't work. The show opens with Bono walking through a crowd to get to the stage while singing "Beautiful Day" (or should I say, "beautiful daaaaaaayyyyyy!"). I guess the crowd wasn't told not to touch the lead singer of U2 because everyone is putting their hands on his jacket as he walks through. When they perform "Where the Streets Have No Name", a projector of all the names of people who died on 9/11 is shown. At the end, Bono opens his jacket to reveal the lining is an American flag and the crowd goes INSANE. I remember this time after 9/11 and it was just the performance America needed; you can see why people loved it.

1. 2015 - My favorite Super Bowl half time performance was the one headlined by Katy Perry. Girlfriend knows how to put on a spectacular show! She enters on a huge mechanical (?) lion float opening with "Roar", then follows it with "Dark Horse" on some weird chess board floor. Probably her most well known set is when she sings "Teenage Dream" and "California Girls" with a beach background of people dancing in palm tree, shark, surfboard, and beach ball costumes. It is absolutely adorable, plus everyone was a buzz about "left shark" who couldn't keep up with the choreography. It was hilarious, but it wasn't like it made the show awful or anything. If anything it added a charming element. Honestly, my favorite part were the palm trees singing. Also, I loved when everyone in the audience sang one of the opening lines to "California Girls".  Lenny Kravitz shows up to sing "I Kissed a Girl" with Katy (which does't really make sense for a straight dude to sing that song, but whatever) and Missy Elliot sings a couple of her hits. Sometimes the featured acts don't work well with the headliner, but those two meshed well together. Katy ends with singing "Firework" while a million fireworks are going off (because the song is literally called "Firework", it really couldn't be more perfect) and she's riding on some shooting star pedestal over the audience. Like this song was made for this moment. It's definitely the best closer to any half time show. Plus during the entire 13 minute act, Katy changed her outfit at least four times.

Blade Runners

The Cutting Edge

Director: Paul Michael Glaser

Cast: Moria Kelly, D.B. Sweeney, Terry O'Quinn, Roy Dotrice

Released: March 27, 1992

This is a movie I've only seen once before and that was a long time ago, so I really didn't remember anything about it. Well, I did remember that it's about a figure skater who gets paired with a hockey player and they hate each other at first, then fall in love. So, basically, I remembered everything! I just didn't remember, you know, the little details. 

When the movie starts, it is 1988 and we see Kate Moseley (Moira Kelly), a figure skater at the Calgary Olympics with her partner. Her partner drops her and any chance of a medal is gone. Meanwhile, Doug Dorsey (D.B. Sweeney) is on the Olympic hockey team and takes a bashing to the head during a game resulting in an injury where he loses eighteen degrees of his peripheral vision and therefore will never be able to play hockey professionally again. Tough break. 

However, Kate needs a new partner and her coach, Anton Pamchenko (Roy Dotrice) seeks out Doug because he is impressed with his skating. Are you kidding me? Just the fact that a hockey player becomes a pairs figure skater is the most ridiculous thing. Just because he can skate, doesn't mean he can learn all the twists and turns and ariel moves that are required of a professional skater. Even the skates are different as we will learn later in the movie (there's a toe pick on figure skates). Being a hockey player and being a figure skater are two totally different things. Even Kristi Yamaguchi said it was very unrealistic.

This all happens two years later, but they had actually met once before at the '88 Winter Olympics. They literally run into each other when Kate was coming off from the ice and Doug had woken up late on the day he was supposed to play at the Olympics. What kind of idiot is late to the Olympics? 

You know how AFI has a list of the 50 greatest villains? Well, Kate Moseley is missing from that list because she is the absolute worst. Okay, maybe I'm being hyperbolic, but I don't find any redeeming qualities in her, even at the end when we're supposed to be rooting for her and Doug to end up together. She's just a spoiled rich girl who bitches and whines about everything and everyone. The reason she can never keep a skating partner is because nobody can stand her snooty ass! (Why she just doesn't skate as a single, I don't understand). She lives in a huge house (complete with her own ice skating rink) with her father, Jack (Terry O'Quinn). This was when he still had hair. You could almost say that this is a prequel to Lost and he just changed his name to John Locke and was thanking God when that plane went down so he would never have to see his terrible spoiler daughter ever again. Although, in the film he always seems to be on his daughter's side, I suppose he feels bad for her because her mother died when she was younger. Still can't stand her, though. I guess she has to keep the moniker of Ice Queen and she does it very well. 

Not surprisingly, Kate and Doug hate each other within the first few minutes of their introduction. I can't really blame Doug for disliking her because she's a complete bitch to him. Their first practice together is terrible, and, of course it is, because he is a hockey player, NOT a figure skater! The fact that he does learn to be a good enough figure skater to compete in the '92 Winter Olympics two years later is just sheer ridiculousness. Pamchenko has Doug pick up Kate and when she orders him to put her down, he just drops her and she lands on her butt really hard on the ice. It looked painful. Totally uncalled for, but can you blame him? He does get plenty of cheap shots in at her which only makes her more angry and more bitchy. These two really do deserve each other. 

There's another scene where they're practicing and the song playing is the most early '90s music you can imagine. I didn't even know the song, but I'm sure it was popular in 1992. Doing some quick research, I found out it's called "Street of Dreams" by Nia Peeples. You know this song was jammin' on the radio in '92. It's totally awful, but also kinda catchy. If you heard it (and you can if you look it up on Spotify!) it will totally take you to the era of the early '90s. You know what I'm talking about if you're familiar with that era. Doug keeps falling (again, because he's NOT a figure skater) and Kate keeps saying, "Toe pick!" because figure skates have toe picks that help them on the ice while hockey skates do not. Because, once again, the two sports are totally different even if both are on the ice! 

There's a scene where Doug and Kate play a game of one-on-one hockey. Kate gets pissed because Doug keeps making all the goals. Insert major eye roll here. Good Lord, girl, are you serious? He's a professional hockey player for crying out loud! That's his job to be good at hockey! And she's getting angry because he's making all the goals and she can't get one? Doug is nowhere near as talented a figure skater as she is (because, DUH!), but he doesn't complain about it! I hate this bitch so much! She also tells Doug she has a boyfriend named Hale who went to Harvard and works at her father's office in London. I totally thought she was making him up, because, really, what person would want to be romantically involved with such a horrid person? But, nope, he really does exist and we see him when he comes to visit for Christmas. At a New Year's party, Doug is clearly jealous of Hale and we see Kate look jealous when women are throwing themselves at Doug. Hmmmmm....makes you wonder if those two crazy kids actually like each other. When they do the countdown to the New Year, people not only kiss their dates, but pretty much just start kissing everybody around them. You know how you go to church and they do that thing where you greet people with a handshake? That was totally what this was, but only with kissing. Just kiss everyone in your vicinity. Thanks, but no thanks. I would not want to swap spit with so many different people. That is disgusting. You KNOW someone (more than one someone!) got sick a few days later, you KNOW IT! There is a funny moment where an older woman kisses a stunned Doug and looks like she's having the time of your life. So, uh, you get it, older lady! Then we get a moment where Doug and Kate come across each other in the kissing frenzy and we are held with a moment of suspense as they stare into each other's eyes...and are they gonna kiss? And the answer is...no! At least not yet! We still gotta hold on to that sexual tension for at least a few more scenes. Well, she does give him a peck on the cheek.

Kate and Doug have made it to the 1992 Figure Skating Championships in Chicago. So I looked this up, and uh, it was actually held in Orlando that year. Fail, movie, fail. Before their performance the first night, Doug is really nervous and throws up behind a curtain (lovely). I'm thinking, Okay, it makes sense that he's nervous since this his first time doing his routine in front of a live audience, but then he tells Kate that before hockey games he had two helmets: one to wear and one to puke in! WTF? He got nervous before hockey games too? But why if he's this so-called great hockey player? He tells an irritated Kate that he usually relaxes after ten minutes and Kate snaps back, telling him their program is only two and a half minutes. They do well enough to get third place.

During their long program the second night, they skate well again, but their scores are not high enough to secure them a place at the Olympics. However, another team messes up and Doug and Kate are back in. They go out to celebrate and Kate, who's not a drinker, has, like, twenty shots. It almost made me throw up. She becomes totally smashed and wants to sleep with Doug. He could have easily taken advantage of her, but takes the noble route and turns her down. Or maybe he didn't find her attractive as a drunk because she was super annoying and kept laughing every five seconds. Can you tell I really hate Kate? Oh, I forgot to mention that Kate and Hale were engaged for a hot second, but got unengaged off screen. Hale, you don't know how lucky you are. Kate gets mad and screams at Doug to leave.

Doug does like Kate, but doesn't do himself any favors when he ends up sleeping with (now bear with me, please) Kate's old partner's new partner. Of course Kate finds out and of course she's pissed, which I can't blame her.

Doug and Kate have five weeks before the Winter Olympics in Albertville and Pamchenko tells them a Russian couple has won the European Championships and are the favorites to win the gold. They're Russian, of course they're the favorites! He has a solution for them to beat them. He has created his own totally absurd move that is dubbed the Pamchenko twist. It's described as a bounce twist into a throw twist and then Doug catches her. Kate tells him they can't do it because it's illegal and she's totally right. There's no way this move would ever be allowed in competition because it could KILL the female skater if it went wrong and this movie could EASILY go wrong. The move has Doug holding Kate by the ankles and spinning her around. He has to make sure he keeps her at a certain height because if her head hits the ice at that speed she is looking at a serious brain injury or worse. The bounce spin is (not surprisingly) illegal in competition because of how dangerous it is, but is performed in exhibitions because I guess people love seeing near death experiences? If I were a pairs figure skater, you could not pay me enough money to do that even if I trusted my partner. Hell. No! As you can see in the clip below, Doug throws her in the air where she does a twist spin and then he catches her. 

Oh, yeah, nothing could go wrong with that move!

Doug says she probably wouldn't be able to do the move and Kate screams at him, "NOBODY CAN TELL ME WHAT I CAN OR CANNOT DO!" so we see a montage of them working on the difficult move. However, the day before the long program where they're going to put in that move, Kate has decided that the dangerous move is out, and I can't blame her as she's the one risking her life by doing it. The first night with the short program, they are bickering about a button on Doug's costume just seconds before going on and are angry with each other as they skate. The commentators can tell they they seem very cold to each other and don't look like they're having fun. The next night at their long program, right before they're about to skate, Doug chooses this time to profess his love for Kate. :::MAJOREYEROLL:::: Everyone's trying to usher them on the ice, but he keeps snapping, "Will you wait a minute?" Uh, this is the Olympics! They don't have a minute! Kate starts crying and says they are putting in the Pamchenko. The way they cut it where they go from the bounce twist to the throw twist is obviously edited together because IT'S PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO DO THAT! Everyone cheers and the movie ends. Wait, did they win the gold medal? I'll tell you what happened: they were disqualified from winning any medal or even placing at all because they did an illegal move! 

Throughout the movie we see an empty glass box where Kate's gold medal will go when she wins one. You think we would see a shot of that at the end since they keep shoving it in our face, but nope. We just assumed they won the gold medal since doing that move would ensure them of that. This is one of the most unrealistic movies about the Olympics, probably even about figure skating.