Movie Night: The Babe Ruth Story.

Review #432: The Babe Ruth Story.

Cast
William Bendix (George Herman "Babe" Ruth), Claire Trevor (Claire Hodgson Ruth), Charles Bickford (Brother Matthias), Sam Levene (Phil Conrad), William Frawley (Jack Dunn), Gertrude Niesen (Nightclub Singer), and Fred Lightner (Miller Huggins) Directed by Roy Del Ruth (#398 - The Maltese Falcon (1931)

Review
I've already reviewed a film based off Babe Ruth (#389 - The Babe), but this film managed to be released in Ruth's lifetime. How much of his lifetime? Long enough for him to see it before he died, as he would see the film three weeks before his death. In that respect, this film feels like it was rushed beyond oblivion with no care for the facts which stink more than a skunk. The Babe wasn't good because of awkwardness, its fallacy of history and a weak script.  But this? This is the anti-thesis of a sports film, this is a sugar coat of a film. How much of a sugar coat? Imagine a Twix candy bar deep fried in chocolate and then filled with sugar. It's so sickeningly sweet with its character that no amount of acting could help this film. And that's where the film keeps on dragging down, down, down. Part of the problem of The Babe Ruth Story is that while it has a sweet side, that's all it has. Bendix isn't even a good player when it comes to the baseball scenes, swinging very oddly and throwing very...weirdly, making John Goodman look great by comparison. Bendix portrays him very child-like, resembling Curly from the Three Stooges. The worst scene in the film is either the ending scene (where the child that he once met that apparently started walking after they met), that "Called Shot" scene (The myth being he called his shot before he hit a home run in the World Series - in the scene, his home run apparently saves a sick child), or when kids sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" outside his hospital window. It's a disgrace to sports biopics that manages to make even "The Babe" look average by comparison. In two attempts to make a biopic about Babe Ruth, both times the films failed to do just one single purpose: Have a good Babe Ruth. You might as well read "The Babe and I" by Claire Ruth, a biopic by his wife. But oh well.

Overall, I give it 1 out of 10 stars.