The Babe

I've never been a big fan of melodramas, and this movie is almost pure melodrama. I am a big fan of baseball, and this Babe Ruth bio is more than a little weak, both historically and stylistically, as a baseball movie. So perhaps you could take it as relatively high praise when I say that I really pretty much liked The Babe, despite its shortcomings, it's entertaining throughout, and Goodman, in his first starring dramatic role, is great. It's a sprawling, expansive performance, and it's hard to imagine any other actor today who could have pulled it off. (And from previous generations? I dunno, how about Jean Gabin in his prime?) Goodman takes Ruth from 18 to 40 years of age, and is totally convincing at both ends. His portrayal of the Babe as a wide-eyed innocent -- a hick man-child who's captivated by the decadent swirl of a cosmopolitan high society in which he never quite believes he deserves to belong -- is often truly touching. It's a pretty simplistic take on the character, though, which leaves a lot of territory unexplored. There's not much social context, for example, no attempt to examine Ruth's transcendent role as a baseball player, and as a public figure. The history of modern baseball, after all, pretty much starts with Babe Ruth. His skills, and popularity, almost completely redefined the sport in a period of five years or so (coincidentally spanning the “Black Sox” World Series-fixing scandal), and his relationship with his fans and the media created a whole new class of sports superstar, on a level of celebrity previously reserved for a very few presidents and movie stars. You don't really get a feeling for that here. Curiously enough, you don't really get a feeling for the game itself, either. Ruth's legendary competitive fire and passion for the game don't come across, because there's never any real baseball context. With no shots of the scoreboard, or of the season standings, there are no big games or crucial at-bats, unless they're related to some personal trauma of the Babe's. We are left to believe that George Herman Ruth was the greatest hitter of all time because he could knock the tar out of the ball when he was dead drunk, or mad at his wife, not because he could put the ball out of the park against the best pitchers in the game, in the ninth inning when a pennant was on the line.