Bend It Like Beckham is a movie that a lot of my friends have insisted that I must see because I used to coach a women's soccer team. It's okay. The art imitates life thing happened. I often had players miss games due to weddings. We once had to play with only eight players because not only was one of my players getting married, her entire wedding party were players, too. OTOH, when another one of the players got married, she postponed her honeymoon a day so she could play the day after the wedding.
I liked it well enough. It's all warm and fuzzy and stuff, and the dad turned out alright. The soccer scenes were pretty bad, especially the final free kick. The problem with sports movies is that a lot of the actors in them aren't very good athletes. It's gotten noticebly better lately, but in a lot of early baseball movies the baseball scenes are painful to watch. The most famous of these is The Pride of the Yankees, with Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig. Gehrig was lefthanded. Cooper was not, and was bad enough trying to swing a bat righthanded that they didn't even bother having him bat lefty. They gave him a reversed uniform, filmed him batting righty, and then flipped the film. (I sympathize with Cooper. I was able to hit lefthanded when I was a kid, but somewhere along the line I lost the ability.)
As I said recent movies are better. It probably started with The Natural. Redford could hit, catch, and pitch, and most of the rest of the players were actual minor leaguers, so it all looked good. Bull Durham had Costner who is very good, and Tim Robbins, who really wasn't, but Nuke was supposed to look goofy. Major League isn't as good a movie as those, but the on field action was excellent, probably the best of any baseball film.
So, who are the best players among the actors? Costner for sure. Wesley Snipes was invited to spring training by a team after he did Major League (he declined). Dennis Haysbert did the Major League movies and Mr. Baseball with Tom Selleck, who also can play. (I saw Selleck and Costner participate in a celebrity Home Run Derby event before an All Star game a few years ago, and they both hit balls out. Matt Damon, OTOH NSM.) Charlie Sheen looked perfect pitching in the Major League movies, and looked good playing center field in Eight Men Out.
