Skip Griparis Movies
This follow-up to 1989's unexpected comedy hit Major League continues the broadly humorous adventures of the misfit Cleveland Indians. No longer the scrappy survivors who pulled off an upset championship victory, the Indians have let success go to their heads, accepting movie roles and hefty endorsement deals. Unfortunately, with success comes complacency, and the Indians soon wind up back in last place. When this poor performance winds up threatening the franchise, the team rediscovers its roots and again achieves unlikely success. Original director David S. Ward brings back most of the first film's memorable characters, including unconventional pitcher Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn (Charlie Sheen), voodoo practitioner-turned-Buddhist Pedro Cerrano (Dennis Haysbert), and base stealer-turned-movie star Willie Mays Hayes (Omar Epps, replacing Wesley Snipes). ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, (more)
Inheriting the Cleveland Indians baseball team from her late husband, covetous ex-showgirl Margaret Whitton wants to move the franchise to Miami, primarily to take advantage of the many personal perks she's been promised by that city. But Cleveland won't yield its lease on the Indians unless the year's attendance falls below 800,000. Figuring that chances for this are already good given Cleveland's inability to win a pennant, Whitton tries to make doubly certain that the fans won't turn out by ordering the club manager to put together the worst team possible. The new players include hasbeen Tom Berenger, blind-as-a-bat pitcher Charlie Sheen, self-protective free agent Corbin Bernsen, and Wesley Snipes, who is constitutionally incapable of hitting straight. Surprisingly, this band of misfits begins winning games, so Whitton decides to break their spirit by forcing them to fly from game to game in a World War II prop plane, assigning them a rickety old bus for road games, and divesting them of their precious whirlpool. Still, the team's talent and esprit de corps grows, especially after "Wild Thing" Sheen dons a pair of glasses and is able to see where he's lobbing his 100-mile-an-hour pitches. Once the players are told that Whitton plans to dump them all whether they win the pennant or not, the team defiantly adopts an "us against the you-know-what" attitude. In a nailbiting 20 minute climax, the Indians face down their hated Yankee rivals in the pennant playoff game. The film's conclusion ties up several loose plot ends, notably the off-and-on romance between the irresponsible Berenger and his "ex" Rene Russo. Though set in Cleveland, Major League was filmed virtually in its entirety in Milwaukee, with the Brewers' play-by-play announcer Bob Uecker giving a terrific performance as the Indians' drink-besotted color commentator. The film represented not only the fictional comeback of the Cleveland Indians, but the actual comeback of producer/director David S. Ward, who'd been in a professional slump for several years. Though containing few surprises, Major League was a box-office smash, inspiring a 1992 sequel, inventively titled Major League II. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, (more)
