When it premiered at Tribeca last year, David Duchovny\u2019s \u201cReverse the Curse\u201d was titled \u201cBucky F*cking Dent,\u201d which is a title that would have at least given this remarkably lifeless film a bit of personality. It\u2019s also the title of the book, also by Duchovny, on which this maudlin film is based. It’s\u00a0a story about baseball and father-son relationships that doesn\u2019t understand either, content to use fandom and a terminal diagnosis in cheap, manipulative ways. Duchovny the director never bothers to ground his melodrama in something that feels real, missing the target on the period in which it\u2019s set and an honest\u00a0understanding of the people who live and die on the success and failure of their favorite teams.<\/p>\n
Set in 1978 – although it never really feels like it outside of Jimmy Carter clips and some questionable fashion choices – “Reverse the Curse” is the story of\u00a0Ted (Logan Marshall-Green), a writer who pays the bills as a peanut vendor at Yankee Stadium even though his pop Marty (Duchovny) is a lifelong fan of the New York baseball team\u2019s rival, the Boston Red Sox. As anyone with even a passing knowledge of baseball knows, the Red Sox were reportedly cursed when Babe Ruth left them to go to the Yankees, leading to a championship drought that lasted multiple generations. They didn\u2019t win the World Series from 1918 to 2004, so \u201cReverse the Curse\u201d takes place right in the heart of that torture for Red Sox fans everywhere. <\/p>\n
In fact, Marty is so attached to his team that it impacts his declining health. Struck down with a terminal cancer\u00a0diagnosis, Ted notices that pop has better days when the Red Sox win, so he sets about on a scheme to basically lie to the old man, replacing the box scores in his daily paper with winning ones and even getting Marty\u2019s buddies to help fake storms \u2013 hose on roof, metal to mimic thunder \u2013 so dad will think a loss was merely a rainout. While Ted loosely comes to terms with his relationship with his father in a manner that feels half-hearted at best, he also forms a relationship with Marty\u2019s \u201cDeath Specialist,\u201d a charming woman named Marianna (Stephanie Beatriz). Can Ted keep Marty around long enough to finally see the curse reversed during the notorious playoff stretch of 1978? And maybe even fall in love at the same time? <\/p>\n
It’s hard to tell someone who has dedicated as much of himself to a project as Duchovny did here \u2013 writing the book, screenplay, and directing \u2013 that he\u2019s not right for the role, but that probably should have happened. Not only does Duchovny, an eternally youthful looking performer, just not come off as old enough to really sell the history of this part, he just doesn\u2019t have the kind of everyman gravity that a dying Red Sox fan needs. Marshall-Green is also miscast, but it\u2019s Beatriz who frustrates most;\u00a0the underrated \u201cEncanto\u201d star struggles to push through the melodrama of her character to find something grounded. She succeeds more than anyone in giving the film a solid foundation, but one wishes it was a part of a project that didn\u2019t waste her work. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When it premiered at Tribeca last year, David Duchovny\u2019s \u201cReverse the Curse\u201d was titled \u201cBucky F*cking Dent,\u201d which is a title that would have at least given this remarkably lifeless film a bit of personality. It\u2019s also the title of the book, also by Duchovny, on which this maudlin film is based. It’s\u00a0a story about …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[33,45],"class_list":["post-1219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy-movies","tag-comedy","tag-drama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}