A League of Ordinary Gentlemen (2004)

Touches You

Let's be realistic.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Given the dearth of of movies out there that treat bowling in a serious light, this documentary is well worth watching. I would definitely recommend it to anyone considering a career in professional bowling.This documentary delves into the psyche behind the bowlers and the PBA commissioner. All in all, this analysis is actually very entertaining and informative. The only parts of this documentary that I found lacking was a piece on the fans and the popularity of the sport world wide. PBA fans run the gauntlet among society and it would have been interesting to see a cross section of these fans. It would also have been interesting to show some of the international PBA regulars that compete on tour (they did show a brief piece on England's Stuart Williams but should have included Ameletto Monacelli or Mika Kouvunemi).Again, this does not detract from this documentary. In fact, since there is such a lack of quality material available on this topic it is easy to see what was left out :)This is a good film and I recommend it without hesitation.

I need to start by saying that this is a reasonably well-constructed film. The music in particular really worked well and fit the film. Also the selection of the four bowlers to highlight was a great choice as they all were so different. In particular, though depressing, Wayne Webb's profile was the most interesting to me--a guy who literally only had bowling and in the end he lost even that.However, I was not especially taken with the film for several reasons. Fundamentally, the film had the biggest "strike" against it with me in particular--I just didn't find the subject matter interesting. Sure, going bowling is great entertainment, but watching others bowl just didn't appeal to me. Additionally, I was turned off at how obnoxious and crude several of the people were--it was just hard to like them. In particular, the new PBA organizer came off, to me, as a bit of a jerk. Oddly, however, even with his and Pete Weber's rather raw language, I was surprised that the film was rated R--as I've heard much worse in several PG-13 films. Because many won't care much for bowling and still others will be turned off by the R rating, this film appears to have a very, very narrow audience.

I was actually watching Enron The Smartest Guys in the Room and it had a trailer for this movie on it. So I went to check it out. Good lord is this documentary boring. It might actually be worth my while to watch real bowling compared to this junk. It basically boils down to two guys that apparently don't like each other. I never really watched bowling. It was one of those sports thats more fun to actually play it. The only way I got through this home video was I was scanning photo's at the time. There's no sense of purpose or direction. It simply meanders wherever and whoever the camera is pointing at. This came to be disappointingly bad and I actually came off disliking bowling more than when I came in watching this. Which I don't think was the intention of the film. I can't call this a documentary. A documentary informs people, this is simply a batch of home video's shot with PBA stars talking. Yawn. Go watch something else.4/10Quality: 4/10 Entertainment: 0/10 Replayable: 1/10

Follows an attempt to revitalize the Professional Bowler's Association, which had fallen on hard times and was in danger of going bankrupt. The "revitalization" mainly seems to consist of a wholescale borrowing from extreme sports and the WWE and is mostly pretty silly to these eyes, although it's clear that a lot of other people dig it.The movie follows a bunch of old-time pro bowlers caught up in the transformation as they wend their way to a "world championship". Most interesting is Wayne Webb, a nice, fragile sort who devoted his life to the sport only to discover that it no longer has much use for him. Webb is a complicated guy, as much a victim of his own weaknesses as he is a victim of his world. It's nice to see that the movie doesn't cheapen him, reduce him down to a stereotypical one-dimension.The movie gets very exciting towards the end, even for this general bowling-skeptic. And it's full of sly jokes -- the best of which is a complex one: the movie begins with the assertion from some bowling fans that the movie KINGPIN presented an exaggerated, stereotypical view of bowling. By the end of the movie, though, we're well into KINGPIN's world, complete with middle-aged men doing crotch shots, cheesy introductions, and a lot of red lighting.