American Pastime is exactly the type of film I love – and yet is handled in such a way that it is exactly the type of film I love to hate. You see, this is the story of a dark, and relatively shameful, untold piece of history about World War 2 that we really just began to make amends for. Fearing espionage from the Japanese, we imprisoned anyone of Japanese descent, regardless of whether they were born in this country or not. These internment (prison) camps were where thousands upon thousands of American citizens spent several years waiting for the war to end, deprived of many of the basic rights afforded every citizen of this nation.

American Pastime attempts to tell their story, while adding in the upbeat tale of a fated baseball game between racist rednecks (some of whom run the camp) and the Japanese immigrants and citizens forced to live there. And this is where the movie runs head first into its biggest issue. It is way too upbeat for the type of film that it is.

Despite the fact that it attempts to show the misery and degradation of the imprisonment, the films always seems to glaze over those moments and follows them up with a little slice of 40′s Americana. Baseball, jazz, young love. All of this comes into play in order to spruce up the film before it ever gets to be too much of a downer, leading to an overall feel that is something akin to “Hallmark Proudly Presents: The Holocaust.” No disrespect meant, but if you can picture a hallmark movie about Auschwitz, you can begin to get a picture of this movie in your mind.

It’s not that it is particularly terrible, but you understand right out of the gate why this went direct to DVD. The production values never seem up to snuff (beyond that of made-for-TV fare) and it so softballs serious historical issues that you can never really feel for its characters — although the cast certainly seems to be trying, most notably Gary Cole (Office Space, The West Wing) and John Gries (Real Genius, Napoleon Dynamite), who play the racist townies who aren’t remotely fond of their new neighbors.

I do think there are a lot of great stories to be mined from this era, but this one was just way too soft to be what it should. Although I can see it as being an interesting tool with which to teach kids and preteens about this era of history; the light nature of it would seem very appropriate for that kind of family environment. Otherwise, I’d give this one a pass.

C. Robert Cargill – - – Email Me

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Austin-based Cargill, who not only loves but owns The Cutting Edge, writes on movies and DVD five times a week.