What  You Should Know

This is a Kevin Costner sports movie. It is a a rather straight-forward, enjoyable film about golf, taking chances and spending time with your buddies.

Why You Should Reconsider

For some reason, be it The Postman, aspects of his personal life or the way his hair looked on Tuesday, Kevin Costner fell out of fashion. When you transpose your feelings about a film, because of an actor you liked in it, and let it bias other films they appear in, you make a mistake. You may have loved Bull Durham and hated Field of Dreams but none of that is relevant to For Love of the Game. Each film is its own animal, even if your leading man happens to be the same person (and they all deal with baseball).

With that being said Tin Cup is, for me, a film that plays to all of Kevin Costner’s strengths. He is at his best when he plays normal people, not the best or brightest, and when sports are involved. Usually films about golf are concerned with the metaphor of golf being life. A person could find that message within this film (much like you could in any sports film) but what is directly presented to you is not trying to intellectualize that point. This is not a serious film. It is not pretentious. This is a comedy, filled with mostly likable characters and centering on golf.

Where this films differs is that the drive of the main character, his “personal truth” concerning the sport he plays, is not about being the best. This is not a story about being the best or winning the championship so much as it is about realizing what it is you want.

Misconceptions

For the reason I just stated I think many people are confused by Tin Cup. A sports movie that is not centered on winning is weird. Sure, you have the typical trope of “It’s not whether you win or lose,” and that certainly applies here. Where this film will trip up viewers is that our hero already learned that lesson and may or may not remember that he knows it. What I mean to say is so much of the charm of this film is that it does not adhere to any of the strict formulas for sports films.

Kevin Costner is not the cocky golfer who has to lose in order to learn how to win. Or the veteran golfer who is being challenged by the young upstart and searches out a former mentor to reconnect why he plays the sport in the first place. No, he is a golf pro working at a driving range that does very little business. He is happy with this (maybe) but then he meets a woman and something clicks for him. I do not wish to go point by point here but I would like to state this is not paint by numbers sports film.