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'Everyone's Hero' scores one for perserverance

By BOB TOWNSEND
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Everyone's Hero" is a labor of love. And that clearly comes through in this feel-good animated feature about a 10-year-old boy, Yankee Irving, who becomes an unlikely World Series hero for the 1932 New York Yankees.

The backstory of the making of the movie is bound to contribute to its appeal. It's the last project Christopher Reeve worked on before he died in 2004, and he's listed in the credits as a director and executive producer. Reeve's wife, Dana, took over as executive producer before she died earlier this year.

20th Century Fox

'Everyone's Hero'

The verdict: A good-humored, computer animated comedy adventure that encourages kids to "keep on swinging."

Directors: Colin Brady, Daniel St. Pierre, Christopher Reeve
Cast: Tyler James Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Rob Reiner, Jake T. Austin, William H. Macy
Run time: 85 minutes
Release date: Sept. 15, 2006
Rating: G
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On the web
Official movie site
View the trailer
Trailers require Quicktime

Ultimately, "Everyone's Hero" was completed by two computer animation veterans, Daniel St. Pierre ("Shark Tale," "Tarzan") and Colin Brady ("Toy Story," "A Bug's Life"), who do a good job of creating visual vignettes that often evoke the nostalgic aura of a Norman Rockwell painting.

But the story — which features the voices of Rob Reiner as a ne'er-do-well talking baseball named Screwie and Whoopi Goldberg as Babe Ruth's talking bat, Darlin' — has a more contemporary, cartoonish thrust. And things get even more frenetic when the movie's villains get in on the action.

William H. Macy voices Lefty Maginnis, a sleazy pitcher for the Chicago Cubs (his gross-out specialty is the "booger ball"), and Robin Williams voices the Cubs' deliciously dastardly owner. Together, they hatch a plot to steal Darlin' from the Babe, just as the Yankees are set to meet the Cubs in the series.

Though he's a strikeout waiting to happen on the sandlot, the young Yankee Irving (voiced by 11-year-old Jake T. Austin) lives for the Yankees, and the Great Bambino is his favorite player. And so, as a series of unfortunate events unfold, Yankee goes on a cross-country quest to recover the Babe's beloved bat. Along the way, he meets a series of quirky characters — including a kindly group of hobos, a precocious young girl (Atlanta's Raven), and a champion Negro leagues team — who could have come straight out of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

Reiner is well cast as the jaded, wisecracking Screwie. Goldberg does Darlin' with a honeyed Southern drawl that sounds like she's channeling the Food Network's Paula Deen. And Macy makes the bumbling and battered Lefty into something akin to a talking Wile E. Coyote. But, not surprisingly, it's the uncredited Williams who bests everybody with his unhinged energy, cracking wise in lines about the rival Babe such as, "Without that bat, he's just big and fat."

Die-hard baseball fans may quibble with the revisionist way the movie treats the historic 1932 series — when the Yankees beat the Cubs in four straight and Ruth supposedly "called" his shot in Game 3, pointing his bat toward centerfield before launching a towering home run into the bleachers.

But the young people "Everyone's Hero" is aimed at probably won't know or care about any of that as they laugh at bickering Screwie and Darlin' and root for Yankee to "keep on swinging." And parents will appreciate the movie's positive message of hope and perseverance.