The Hill (2023)

The Hill (aka Eleven for Eleven) review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

The Hill plays like a standard movie for the Christian crowd that wants a good old-fashioned baseball movie with Christian miracles. In terms of being a film that embraces Christianity, it’s far from the worst of the Christploitation lot. What that means in the grand scheme of things, however, is that the film is a boring melodrama. It doesn’t touch on anything all that more meaningful than a fistful of other sports films along the same lines can serve up.

Set in rural America, the story focuses on Rickey, the son of a pastor and his legs bound in braces. He loves baseball even if his physical handicap makes that dream of hitting home runs seem harder to attain. But even if his braces do come off and he can walk freely again (he does), his father, Pastor James Hill (Dennis Quaid), still forbids baseball in the family. The bitter father apparently baseballed as much as he hates losing the faith of his congregation. James has a way of pissing people off, even though it doesn’t take much to whip up the tobacco-spitting wife abusers in one town. So James moves again with his family to Oklahoma, and Rickey has another chance to prove himself while still keeping in touch with his first love via postcards.

As Rickey grows older, he starts taking baseball more seriously and tries out for Major League Baseball. Despite all the scoffing he gets, he keeps up the faith that a kid with braces who miraculously broke free of them can play ball. His quest to become a top player becomes challenging both for his father's scorn and his medical condition worsening. But with some old-fashioned melodrama, this sports drama revolving around Christian faith will dish up the most predictable of hope-generating narratives to make the Midwest demographic shout “hallelujah.”

A danger runs into reviewing a film like this as a widget. As a made-to-order Midwest sports drama smeared with faith and hope, I can’t deny the film delivers what it promises. Dennis Quaid gives a solid performance for the role he steps into, even if this type of film has become his bread and butter over the past few years. Colin Ford does fairly well as Rickey and doesn’t play too much on the gee-whiz American boy stereotype. Joelle Carter feels like she could ham up her role as the bitter mother trying to bond father and son, but she is just okay. The aged Scott Glenn is also doing a routine job as the critical MLB scout who is ready to have his socks blown off with how well Rickey can hit a ball.

There’s a quaintness to the film that gives it a very vanilla flavor. It goes through the motions just fine and will probably make for a decent first-time family movie for the kids who are ready to hear about stories more critical of family, faith, and maybe even sports. It’s also timid with its romance and merely shrugs at its own insertions of theodicy to explain why bad things happen to good people. The baseball sequences are also decent, but the moments of Rickey’s home runs are played more by the book than rivaling anything you’ve seen in previous pictures of the sport. But with its slow pacing and ho-hum dialogue, it’s hard to be invested in any of this picture on a surface level.

The Hill is a beginner movie for those who haven’t seen any inspiring baseball movies or know the meaning of the word cliche. I can only assume it’ll appeal to old folks pining for a “traditional” tale of Americana that isn’t satirical or critical of the mid-20th century. For that crowd, this film will fit the bill. For everybody else, I can’t imagine there’s much interest as innings increase with sluggish and familiar motions.