The Sandlot

Directed by David Mickey Evans, The Sandlot follows a group of circa 1960s kids as they bond over baseball and eventually confront a feared neighborhood dog. Filmmaker Evans, armed with his and Robert Gunter’s screenplay, delivers an amiable, irresistibly nostalgic drama that benefits from its assortment of appealing characters, as Evans does a terrific job of eliciting above-average work from a cast comprised mostly of young teenagers – with, especially, Tom Guiry (cast as the ostensible protagonist) and Patrick Renna (playing a wisecracking cutup) obvious standouts within a strong cast. (It doesn’t hurt, either, that the movie boasts superb efforts from adult performers like Denis Leary and James Earl Jones.) The perpetually (and pervasively) affable atmosphere goes a long way towards compensating for narrative that isn’t, particularly in the movie’s first half, especially propulsive (ie it’s awfully episodic at the outset), but it’s worth noting, certainly, that the eventual emphasis on the kids’ battle of wills with the aforementioned dog ensures that the film’s final third is far more involving than one might’ve anticipated – which, when coupled with a genuinely moving climax, cements The Sandlot‘s place as an above-average piece of work.

*** out of ****