FEATURE FRIDAY | MILLION DOLLAR ARM

FEATURE FRIDAY | MILLION DOLLAR ARM

Welcome to another installment of Feature Friday, in which we share with you some of our favorite Movies & TV shows! When we were first dating, one of the things we bonded over was chatting about some of our favorite shows. We’ve found that it’s the same for a lot of our couples, too! So, every now and then, we will showcase a different movie or show and share some of the reasons why we recommend it and the things that we really like about it. So be sure to tune in, check out some of our favorites, and maybe even turn it into a date night with your fiance! Make dinner or order in and tune in to watch one of our favorites!

This week: Million Dollar Arm

Million Dollar Arm is one of those movies that would seem incredibly far-fetched if it were pitched (no pun intended), if it weren’t for the fact that it’s based on a true story. It stars “Mad Men'”s Jon Hamm as JB, a sports agent, who has recently launched his own company and is in need of new stars. He comes to the shocking realization that there are a billion people in India and that maybe at least one of them could be good at baseball. He finds an investor willing to help him go to India to scout for talent, and they come up with the idea for “Million Dollar Arm,” a talent contest to find two Indian pitchers to bring back to the US to try out for Major League scouts.

JB, with help from Ray (a scout played by Alan Arkin), winds up narrowing the candidates down to Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel (Suraj Sharma and Madhur Mittal, respectively), who he brings back to the States and the shoe is on the other foot now. Originally, it was JB and Ray who were fish out of water in India, but now Rinku and Dinesh have to adjust to life in America, with very funny results. The supporting cast is great. Aasiv Mandvi plays JB’s business partner, the late Bill Paxton plays the pitching coach that breaks the bad news that baseball and cricket are WAY more different than JB had originally bargained for, and Lake Bell plays Brenda, JB’s tenant and seemingly the only person who views Rinku and Dinesh as people, rather than just prospects.

It’s a Disney sports movie, so the feels abound, but they feel totally earned and not manipulated. Disney owns ESPN, so it lets them do a little bit of the ol’ corporate synergy by populating the movie with actual TV baseball personalities, which adds to the authenticity of the proceedings. Overall, Million Dollar Arm is just a super-fun movie with some charming performances. If you, like us, are on-board for anything with Jon Ham, you should definitely check it out!