Attempt to follow-up THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH/’55 with another leading man role for Tom Ewell doesn’t come off, doesn’t even try. Ewell was probably too eccentrically sardonic to carry a film anyway (his B’way & Hollywood success with ITCH something of a fluke*), but it’s hard to see this minor piffle about a lawyer who manages a suburban Little League team over the summer making much of a mark with anyone. The kids are pleasant enough, son Rudy Lee, who winds up playing on an opposing team, really quite good. And it’s a kick to see rail-thin 25-yr-old Dean Jones in his first year in film (he’s the coach). But there’s little spark or originality here as the boys’ parents bitch about field positions, strategy & losses. Plus single mom Ann Miller who makes Ewell’s wife Anne Francis jealous. Eventually, Ewell wins 'the big game' by letting the kids have fun out there. Piffle. With tv director Herman Hoffman (using Vincente Minnelli’s FATHER OF THE BRIDE/’50 as a loose template) unable to work up the shots needed to make sense of the action on field. (There is one nice over-head gag shot involving a pop fly . . . ONE.)
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The screenplay, from comic novelist Nathaniel Benchley (son Peter of JAWS fame), might have been better served as one of the dozens of wry one-reel shorts his dad, Robert Benchley, made on the trials of modern life in the ‘30s and ‘40s. And would have saved about 80 minutes.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *While Ewell soon reverted to supporting roles, the even more eccentrically sardonic Walter Matthau showed how to pull this sort of thing off in THE BAD NEWS BEARS/’76. But then, Matthau, who took a similar B’way-to-Hollywood path to leading man status with Neil Simon’s THE ODD COUPLE/’68, had a touch of empathetic genius in his acting.
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