Sports movies have been churned out by Hollywood. Some have been great. Others not so much. I’m curious how these movies are handled in other markets. I’m thinking more about mostly American sports such as baseball and American football. Not thinking about movies like Rocky since boxing is pretty universal. Are baseball and football movies shown in European markets? Are they marketed as sports movie or are other aspects featured in the advertising? Do people go see movies like Bull Durham or Field of Dreams?
:dubious: for some reason this didn’t come out as clear as I thought it would. I hope you can understand what I am looking for.
When it comes to Europeans actually watching the movies, it’s almost certainly a question of stars putting asses in seats. Al Pacino fans were probably more likely to catch Any Given Sunday, for example. And both Kevin Costner fans probably caught Bull Durham.
The ones over there seem better made at least, though then again I was probably only seeing the “good ones” in German (though then again this was the same teacher who showed us Emil und die Detektive… the new one… with a bad rap song, and Bella Martha (which was okay I guess) and the one who ingrained “Jeden Tag, jede Sekunde triffst Du eine Entscheidung, die Dein Leben verändern kann” into my mind forever after having to watch Lola Rennt 50000000 times… maybe I should just stop). Das Wunder von Bern was pretty well made, though it seemed to fall under drama more than sports, and I hates me some sports-centered movies. Not sure if this is the norm though.
Soccer isn’t exactly rare in America. I played organized soccer into high school, longer than I did baseball. And I’m 40. It is even more widespread now. I have no hard numbers but I am sure that soccer is better known and played more in America than baseball or football is in Europe. Of course baseball is very popular in Asia and I am curious how American baseball movies are received there.
See I knew I didn’t write it well. Not very surprising that hockey movies play in Canada. I am curious about how mainstream American sports movies are handled in areas that don’t play or watch the sports in question. Are they marketed there? Does anyone watch? Are any popular?
A couple of years ago they showed ‘Any Given Sunday’ here, in the Netherlands. I remember one scene in which it was fairly graphically depicted that some guy lost his eye on the pitch… Don’t know about reception, though, I guess I found it alluring enough to go and see in the cinema and that I found it enjoying as well, but that’s as far as I can remember.
Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, Any Given Sunday and The Fan were all played here in Sweden. I remember not quite understanding the final scene of The Naked Gun when I watched it at age twelve, as baseball was totally alien to me, but the movie was played and appreciated.
I’ll echo what **Priceguy ** said, being Swedish too.
I guess it all depends on how much the movie relies on understanding the sport. Baseball can be quite dificult to follow, so if crucial plot points deal with innings, outs, strikes and such, the whole tension in the movie might get lost, as the whole audience is woshed.
OTOH, great sports movies aren’t really about the sport, but about people. If the drama is good, we’ll ignore the part of the sport we don’t understand.
What **Charlie Tan ** says - the good movies are about the people (and the Star names). Mostly, Brits have enough understanding of specifically American sports (baseball=rounders; American Football=rugby with helmets ) to be able to glide over the details and enjoy the action.
Baseball is one of the most popular sports played in Australia (maybe the most popular - I forget now) in terms of number of players. It’s just that it’s played by schoolkids mostly. There is no TV coverage or professional baseball here, but a lot of Australians would understand the basics of it.
Baseball and soccer are both big in Japan, so movies about them play well here without any special adaptation (Beckham is also very popular here). Boxing is also a standard sport, and the Rocky films are considered classics.
Ice hockey hasn’t really caught on (there’s a league, but it’s very minor. The Olympic team was entirely made up of Japanese-Americans and -Canadians), and there aren’t many movies about it at the video stores (although have there been many recently?)
There are also a lot of popular sports movies here that probably wouldn’t play so well in the States: Ping Pong (about Ping Pong) trailer, Waterboys (about synchronized swimming), (all the Youtube links for Waterboys are for the TV series made a few years later)
Attack Number Half (which I can’t find on imdb), a Thai movie about a transsexual volleyball team.
Some of the smaller movie that would get a theatrical release in the US may go straight to DVD here but the big movies like Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, Any Given Sunday, White Men Can’t Jump etc. all got a full release in this part of the world. I actually saw three of the ones I mentioned in the cinema and one (Any Given Sunday) on DVD.
I’d say sports movies play well in Canada. Hockey movies, of course, but I’d guess that football and baseball films do just as well as they do in the US. Remember, we’ve got one MLB team, and enough American TV channels to be saturated with NFL and college football every weekend during the season, in addition to our own similar football game, so the sports certainly aren’t foreign. No reason why movies about those sports wouldn’t do well in Canada.
Bend it Like Beckham was more of a ‘chick’ movie than a sports movie in America.
How about the endless versions of ‘The Bad News Bears’? (like The Mighty Ducks for example) Do those ‘play’ in world wide markets?
Which is pretty much what happened (to me) during the final scene of The Naked Gun. The umpire needs to prolong the match, so he starts to call out “ball” on obvious strikes, which said precisely zip and nothing to me. I didn’t know what “ball” meant, the strikes weren’t obvious to me, and so forth.
That’s pretty much how soccer is here. Probably more kids play in organized soccer leagues than any other sport (I’m sure it varies widely throughout the country). But not much TV coverage. In the Italian restaurant I frequent at work they are constantly watching soccer on TV. It’s on one of the Spanish Language stations. Poker is shown more on sports TV than soccer.
It’s been a while since I saw it but I think he was not so much prolonging the game with his pitch count. He found that when he called a strike on the opposing batter the home crowd went crazy. He started playing to the crowd for the applause. Not something an umpire is supposed to do, which was the joke. In fact here it is.
) to be able to glide over the details and enjoy the action.