The Final Season
Release Date:
October 12, 2007
Limited release
There are select actors out there that, for better or worse, are unable to shake free from their famed fictional counterparts. For instance, there’s Debra Messing, known best for portraying Grace Adler on the NBC comedy Will & Grace. Now, she can star in as many films as she wants, and the average moviegoer will still expect Will and Jack to accompany her in the scene. The same goes for the entire cast of Saved by the Bell, really. Forget acting, Dustin Diamond can’t even find work anymore.
The curse applies more to actors in television, but it oftentimes can be applied to actors in film as well. Sean Astin, this means you.
Astin, who has yet to completely rid himself of anything related to Notre Dame footballer Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger from the 1993 film Rudy, will try his luck again in director David Mickey Evans’s The Final Season. The film, based on a true story, stars Astin as Kent Stock, a man who gives up his wedding plans to take over head coaching duties of a high school baseball team. It becomes his responsibility to fill the shoes of the team’s former coach and convince the players that they can be winners, too.
Surprisingly, this feel-good drama co-stars comedian Tom Arnold, who usually disregards quality films for more sophomoric, silly comedy like Soul Plane, The Stupids and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Rounding out the cast are Rachael Leigh Cook, Powers Booth and Michael Angarano.
But the reason this one looks like a winner? Director Evans, who delighted practically every child in 1993 with the release of kiddie baseball film The Sandlot, which he wrote and directed. (Eric Hughes/BOP)