Starring: Algenis Perez Soto, Rayniel Rufino, Andre Holland, Ann Whitney, Ellary Porterfield, Jaime Tirelli

Directed by: Ryan Fleck, Anna Boden

Sony Classic

The Official Site of Sugar

Discuss Sugar on the boards!

In certain places in the word baseball is king. It’s more then a passionate past time or something to do after school, it’s a way of life, a means to escape to a whole new world. In the Dominican Republic Miguel “Sugar� Santos struggles in a baseball training camp hoping that one day his curve ball will get good enough to move him and his family to America. What the film Sugar does is asks us is what we would do when our dreams overwhelms us. When it doesn’t quite work out how do you cope? How do you move on? It makes for a well-told, by-the-numbers sports film that takes the ultimate twist all those Kevin Costner movies never bothered to.

Sugar (played sharply by newcomer Algenis Perez Soto) is young, talented and he loves his mother so when he gets the inevitable call up to the next tier of the baseball ladder it’s easy to root the aspiring pitcher along. Even if you don’t particularly care about the sport you can’t help but get invested watching Sugar go through the ranges of adjustment. He’s a fish out of water, a big fish from a small pond confronting a new pool of talent and a third fish analogy that I can’t come up with right now. You see what I’m saying though. A quick bond is made watching Sugar adjust to a language barrier, house mothers, American girls and being surrounded by really talented ball players that are all fighting for the same positions he is.

It’s at this point that the sports clichés introduce themselves. Some of them are necessary to move the story along but when a struggling Sugar knocks over a water cooler after a frustrating performance and eventually turns to drugs to sharpen his skills, the film was losing me a little. It was odd to see such a well-told story use such conventional ideas to get its point across. Surely they could get there by using themes we haven’t seen a million times before.

Well maybe they’ve been used so often because they work so well or more likely because they’re accurate. Sugar offers us a look at how big Baseball really is and how many lives it touches outside the obvious spotlight of the major leagues. In that I suppose a few tired old clichés isn’t the end of the world. Besides, just when it seems to be getting trapped in an underdog sports film trap, Sugar finds a way to be original, telling a story not about fulfilling your dreams but how to keep going when your dreams aren’t exactly what you expected them to be. The final act of the film is an unexpected and beautiful lesson in figuring out how to make life work for you. How to find a new American Dram when the first one doesn’t work out.

If Sugar has any flaws it’s that it takes place in such a short time. We see what could have been a career’s worth of highs, lows, frustration and fear on the pitcher’s mound condensed into one season of ball. It’s hard to connect the range of emotions and decision-making that Sugar goes through in such a short period of time. I guess it’s the jaded critic in me looking for those clichés that wants to see the young pitching stud become a old workhorse before the game beats him, but if Sugar teaches us anything it’s that life, at any time, can defeat even the best of us.

Sugar is a collection of sports clichés told on fast-forward but if you can wiggle through the expected then there’s a sweet little story to be found. It’s one that’s well performed, really well shot and perhaps a little too good for its seemingly simple themes.

Rating: 7 out of 10 - The best thing about Suagr is its star Algenis Perez Soto, a first time actor that director’s Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden picked up while scouting talent in the Dominican Republic. He brings so much authenticity and power to the role of Santos. People take playing confused for granted but Soto brings a lot of subtlety to this fish out of water character.

If anything, Boden and Fleck have proven that, beyond being able to tell a story, they certainly know how to cast their leads. An engaging figure can guide you through the rockiest of narratives.

Not for me but baseball fans should enjoy this alternative take on the underdog story. Enough to own? Tough to say. How into baseball are you exactly? Sure you own The Sandlot but do you own The Sandlot 3?

It is true that I’m not a huge baseball fan. I grew up following the Phillies in a very pro-Phillies family, but it rarely clicked with me. The Phillies were good for a couple of season in the 90s but for the rest of the time being a fan of theirs was an exercise in patience. It’s hard to follow a team that always lets you down but doing so is the definition of a TRUE fan. I could never commit.

I wanted to do something sweet for the comic though. The movie didn’t deserve to be made fun of and neither does baseball. I found it easiest to turn it around on myself. Not that I deserve it but taking the hit is the least that a good host can do. I miss my grandfather and it’s true that I wonder what he would think of me, how we would get along. Stuff like that. He was a good guy. Wish I’d had more time with him. More of a chance for us to get to know each other. I certainly would go to more baseball games if he were a round.

A quick reminder about the new items. Everyone be sure to stop by the Pimp store to pick up a JLCM book or the Artist’s Edition of the book, as well as the brand new Kill Zombie Wash shirts which we’ll be ordering sometime this coming week.

I want to be careful about mentioning this stuff too often. I don’t want to become a broken record about it but I’ve put a lot of blood, sweat, tears and money into these things so I feel compelled to keep it alive for the stragglers. Many thanks to all of you that have ordered. Please bear with me while I pimp myself out a little.

I’ve seen the two big releases for the weekend, Fast and Furious which I reviewed on Friday and Adventurelad which should get a full review Monday or Tuesday. Adventureland was a nice surprise. I’d been warned ahead of time that it was more dramatic than director Greg Matolla’s last film Superbad and I’m glad I was. I think a lot of people, myself included, were expecting a broader comedy with heart. Adventureland is grounded, dramatic and serious more often then it’s funny. Knowing that let me erase that expectation and view it as something completely different. It’s unexpectedly beautiful and one of the strongest contenders to make it through the rest of the year to my top ten list. Definitely worth checking out.

Thanks for stopping by guys. More on Monday.