betty dalton Even if you dont like baseball you could still appreciate this picture about an aspiring young baseball talent who has lost his confidence at his game and isnt able to throw winning curve balls anymore. Having already signed a million dollar contract this baseball kid is under tremendous pressure to perform. Enter Paul Giamatti as a mental coach who is appointed to get the kid's winning streak back. Will he succeed or will he fail? I wont tell.The Phenom is in nothing comparable to other sport movies. Baseball is just an excuse to let two people talk on screen with eachother about FEELINGS. Everything in this movie takes its time. As if the movie itself reflects the rut the baseball kid is in. Slow scenes, many pauses. Many widely spun out scenes about relationships. Not at all a sports movie. If you expect a cool,fast movie about a baseball hero, you will be disappointed. If you wanna see how sportheroes mentally can struggle with loosing, then this is the movie for you.It is a movie about a young kids own mindgames: thoughts he throws at himself and keep hurting again and again. Man is one's own worst enemy and this sweet baseball kid is struggling to deal with that. 10 points for realism and originality. Less points for the drama. Âverage of a well deserved 8. This movie about coping with loosing is a winner!I want to dedicate a special paragraph to producer, writer and director Noah Bushel. This young man has achieved something very unique: he has written EVERYONE of his directed movies! Few great directors have achieved that. I urge you to look at his other work too, because of his total control over his own movies. Everytime he produces something it is unique. Very interesting director of whom we certainly will see more surprising movie gems!

pdt831 Having just finished Rick Ankiel's book, The Phenomenon, and just finishing this movie, I think it's pretty obvious the plot is based on his story. As mentioned in the FAQ, nobody has come out and said the movie is based on Ankiel but the many similarities are striking and pretty hard to ignore. Here are a few:1) Ankiel attended Port St. Lucie HS like the main character, 2) Ankiel's dad was crazy, abusive and overbearing. Ankiel even talks about him screaming at and intimidating his HS coaches. He also took credit for Rick's success, 3) Like the movie's main character, Ankiel told people his father was a fisherman and hung drywall, when in reality he was a drug dealer who spent time in prison, 4) The main character in the movie plays in the Atlanta Braves organization, which was Ankiel's favorite team growing up, 5) After he loses his control in the 2000 playoffs, Ankiel moves down to the minors and spends a ton of time with sports psychologist Harvey Dorfman, and they talk a lot about his past with an abusive father.Those are just some of the glaring similarities so it seems pretty obvious this movie was inspired by Rick Ankiel's story. As usual, artistic license has added and changed certain parts of the story but it seems pretty obvious this movie was based on Ankiel's story.I'd consider the overall production below average, in part due to the lack of character development. However, I applaud the ambition for undertaking a difficult and often unspoken aspect of professional sports. The "yips" is a well-known phenomenon in the baseball world, but one that players avoid in daily conversation because of its ability to sneak up on any player at any time, and the emotional toll it takes on its victims. Because this theme seemed to take precedence, I was willing to overlook the main character's unrealistically poor pitching mechanics and the frequent and awkward misuse of baseball terminology. It would have been nice if the movie focused a bit more on the emotional turmoil experienced in the player's personal life as he tries to overcome his affliction. This seems to be a product of the lack of character development. Additionally, I think beginning the movie with various notable events throughout the pitcher's childhood would have provided some more context, added some character development, and provided a good foundation for the rest of the movie.

J Banana This is a slow movie so if you are looking for a baseball movie with excellent plays, this is not what you are going to get. This is pure dialog with psychological upbringing playing a major role in the protagonists head.I'll keep this short, this movie is about a good kid who is barely out of high school and has an incredible skill at pitching. He's a phenom, a boy genius with a ball in his hand.The movie is about all the pressures that a young man goes through when he has a gift even he has yet to truly understand and control. He undergoes struggling with it and begins to question his talent, his beliefs and all that he was taught about pitching. This is a movie for someone who wants to put themselves in the position of someone who is struggling to nurture what he/she naturally is talented at. The protagonist has pitchers block, many of us have a type of block in our life that we struggled to get through or failed to get through.

goodman528 It's a movie about a kid who loved playing baseball. He worked really hard everyday to get better and better at the game, then suddenly one day he discovers he is better than everybody else. So, what now?Everybody expects something of him. His team expects him to throw 100mph fastballs into the strike zone game after game. His coach expects him to stay out of trouble. His teacher expects him finish school. His dad expects him to not get lazy and waste his talent. His girlfriend expects him to be just a normal guy who she can talk to and relate to and be best friends with. And his shrink expects him to accept his talent.Would I recommend you to watch this movie? Yes. Although most of us can't throw 100mph fastballs, but if you can just suspend belief for a moment and put yourself into his shoes, you will find a very well written story about a working class kid working hard and making a success of himself.No. If you go into this thinking "he's making $$$ millions, what's he got to complain about?" or "he's naturally talented, why everybody want to drag him down?" Then you are better off watching something else.