The concept of an LGBTQ reboot of“A League of Their Own,”the classic World War II-era women’s baseball movie made in 1992, is an inspired one.
Penny Marshall’s beloved film — the first female-directed movie to take in $100 million at the domestic box office — was a fictionalized version of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, a Midwestern-based circuit that was meant to help keep baseball alive during a time when the best major- and minor-league male players were serving in the military.
The movie explored issues of misogyny, class conflict, corporate cynicism and, above all, girl power. Plus, it had compelling baseball scenes and a big-star cast that includedGeena Davis,Madonna,Rosie O’Donnell, Lori Petty andTom Hanks.
从这部电影是任何有意义的explorati失踪on of same-sex relationships and race relations in 1940s America, and that’s something co-creator, executive producer and star Abbi Jacobson aims to correct in her new Prime Video series.
Unfortunately, partly hampered by their fealty to the original film, Jacobson and co-creator Will Graham (“Mozart in the Jungle”) don’t swing for the fences. Instead, the eight-episode first season of “A League of Their Own”is, say, a solid single up the middle. At least they didn’t strike out; a second season could hold much potential.
The first two episodes made their Bay Area premiere atFrameline46in June, and the full first season debuts on Prime Video on Friday, Aug. 12.
The characters in the series are different from the characters in the film, which is how it should be, so why did the show’s decision makers feel the need to replicate the film’s story beats, even down to the midseason trade that separates sisterly rivals and a pointless, half-hearted re-creation of the classic “there’s no crying in baseball”line?
And did it have to be the Rockford Peaches? There were three other teams in that first season — when do the Racine Belles get their due? The Peaches are managed, again like the film, by a washed-up ex-ballplayer (Nick Offerman sleepwalks through his role as Dove Porter, a facsimile of Hanks’ Jimmy Dugan). The players live together and are monitored by a chaperone (a no-nonsense Dale Dickey), and they are tasked with gelling as teammates and helping sell the league to a skeptical public.
The original twists of the series are the journeys of Carson Shaw (Jacobson,“Broad City”), the Peaches’ catcher who’s exploring her sexuality; and Max Chapman (Chanté Adams), a Black woman whose dream of pitching in professional baseball seems impossible because of her gender — she is rejected by a men’s semi-pro team — and her race, as the AAGPBL isn’t integrated.
Carson’s husband is fighting overseas, but she finds herself sexually drawn to the team’s swan-like beauty, Greta Gill (Danville nativeD’Arcy Carden,“Barry”). A switch-hitter, indeed.
On the other side of town, Max — who is in a secret relationship with a woman — feels pressure from her mother (Saidah Arrika Ekulona), who wants her help in the beauty shop she manages. But Max doesn’t want to give up her baseball dreams, and takes a job at an airplane parts factory with an eye on joining the factory’s club team.
The most interesting part of the series is an all-too brief glimpse into the secret world of same-sex speakeasies — one such safe space is a saloon owned by Vi (good luck charm O’Donnell).
But “A League of Their Own,”aside from costumes and period setting, seems to have no understanding of the 1940s. The women in the series act like modern women, not like those in the 1940s. Today’scolloquialisms are the norm — people are “so” sorry; others are “losing their s—.” Need help? “Nah, I’m good.” Thus, the challenges they face don’t seem as daunting, lowering the stakes.
也,棒球是可怕的!格雷厄姆和雅各布斯on seem to have forgotten they are partly making a sports story. Worst of all, the fastballs that zip toward the plate are, incredibly, an obvious computer effect. That can’t happen in a season two.
L“A League of Their Own”:Starring Abbi Jacobson, D’Arcy Carden, Chanté Adams, Gbemisola Ikumelo and Nick Offerman. (TV-MA. Eight approximately one-hour episodes.) Premieres Friday, Aug. 12, on Prime Video.