Hard ball Hardball has variously been compared to The Bad News Bears and The Mighty Ducks, but this movie strives to be more hard-hitting than either of those family-friendly, comedic efforts. A more apropos likening might be to Dangerous Minds, the flaccid, Hollywood-ized tale of a teacher who makes a difference to her underprivileged students. Hardball is about a reluctant baseball coach who changes the lives of his pre-teen players even as they change his …showed first 75 words of 637 total…

…showed last 75 words of 637 total…Hardball doesn't bring anything new or especially interesting to the table. It wants to be a lot of things from a hard-hitting drama about life in the projects to a feel-good story of triumph over adversity, but only does as much as the formula permits. (And the very last scene, which force-feeds closure, is a source of aggravation.) When its list of faults are catalogued, the most serious crime Hardball is guilty of is soft-peddling.