 |
 Tracy and Hepburn "go at it again" in this film described as "Damon
Runyonesque." Hepburn is an athlete that shows great "promise" in both tennis
and golf. Tracy is a "shady sports promoter" that wants to "publicize" her
exploits and make them both some money. Once they team up, "the fireworks and
the fun begin!" They note that director George Cukor won an Oscar for My Fair
Lady and that this film features lots of "the day's superstars of sport." 1952, 95 minutes, VHS
This is the second to last comedy film from Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn
(Desk Set was the last) and it finds our two favorite Bickersons trodding mildly
amusing, if familiar terrain. Spencer is the semi-crooked sports promoter,
Mike Conavan and Hepburn is the straight arrow sports star with a self
confidence problem named Pat Pemberton. These two mismatched buddies hook up
to go on a sports tour and the results are fairly benign. An echo of their
sharp and smart comedies of the forties (see Woman Of The Year and Adam's Rib in particularly) is easy enough to digest, but you won't find any laugh out
loud moments (more like a few silent, knowing smiles that say, "ah yes, that
was kind of cute, Spence.") and Hepburn comes off as a tad on the whiney side
(she's always breaking down, complaining about nobody owning her, either accept
that you are owned or dump all these overbearing men - just stop crying about
it!). Pat is a physical education teacher at a college out west. Unlike the
women P.E. teachers I had to deal with in junior high and high school, Pat has
a boyfriend. I'm not going to sit here and paint all these burly, mustached
women gym teachers with the same broad brush strokes, I'm sure some them are
pretty open about who they are, but I am reminded of an incident that happened
when I was in seventh grade. We were in P.E. and outside playing softball, boys and girls together (thanks
Title IX). I'm on first base and one of my boys jacks one deep into the
fenceless outfield. I know that I gots to score, because we were way out in
front and I just love winning by double digits (keeps the other team honest).
I'm rounding third and some moose in the outfield with a cannon for an arm
whips that baby into the catcher as I'm barrelling toward home. Like my idol
Pete Rose in that one All-Star game, I lower my shoulder thinking that if I'm
being thrown out at home, this sucker is going to remember my name. I lay into
this catcher and that pansy can't hold onto the ball! I'm jumping up and down
like I just won the Polish Lottery or something and this big woman P.E. teacher
that looks like Jose Canseco runs over and gets in my face, telling me that I'm
out because I was playing rough. I get in Big Mama's face and tell her that I
may have been playing rough, but when you're blocking my home plate you've got
expect some turbulence. She points to the catcher, who was a 13 year old girl
that weighed about sixty pounds lying in the dirt crying and tells me that I'm
not only out of at the plate, but I'm out of the game. I tell her "whatever"
and leave to go get high or something behind the shop class and I tell her as I
go that next time she should play catcher and we'll see whose five o'clock
shadow
scratches who, if you catch my meaning. The point of that story is that Pat and Mike didn't really leave much of an impression on me.  Pat's boyfriend is named Collier Weld and he is some kind of fundraising
official at the college she teaches at. With a first name like Collier, it is
evident from the outset that he's going to be one of those bland dopes that
only stifles Pat's style and prevents her from becoming her own person. It
makes you wonder why someone like Pat takes the entire movie to figure all this
out, but then we wouldn't get to see Pat play all that exciting tennis and golf
that takes up far too much movie time, would we? Collier is trying to get some
money out of a rich, crabby guy so he takes Pat along for a foursome (in golf,
you
sickos!). Collier and this guy's loud-mouthed wife battle it out against the
would-be donor and Pat. Collier has told Pat that he is going to let the old
man's team win and that she needs to hold up her part of the game and do well.
With all this pressure on her, Pat fails miserably and has to endure the sour
glances of her teammate and her fiancee as well as the inane prattling of the
rich man's wife who insists on giving Pat advice on how to golf. Pat gets
pissed, pushes the old hag down in a chair, commandeers a driving range and
proceeds to hit some really good balls down the fairway (or whatever these golf
guys call it - real men don't play or pay attention to golf, so all I know is
what I learned watching Tin Cup). Pat stomps off into the club house and commiserates with none other than
television's Thurston Howell, III! That's right, it's Jim Backus telling Pat
that she's really quite good and she should enter a tournament with a bunch of
women P.E. teachers, I mean, lady golfers. She enters the tournament and does
really well in the first few days. Along the way she encounters shady promoter
Mike in her hotel room. We know he's a bit of an operator because he wears a
light colored suit coat, dark shirt and a solid color tie. I think we've all
seen that outfit before, capiche? He tells her that he'd appreciate it if he
could know for sure that she would come in second. She gets all hoity-toity
like some of these self-important athletes get when you ask them to miss a free
throw or not score so many points in a certain game and tells him to get lost.
He gives her his card and tells her to look him up sometime if she ever needs
some promoting. That's kind of nifty - I never would have guessed that guys
who fix games carry around business cards. Makes it handy if you have a road
game and need to get ahold of your fixer before you figure out how many times
you need to fumble in the Rose Bowl or something.  On the last day of the match, Pat is playing for the title against Babe
Didrikson Zaharias. This particular Babe was some type of famous woman golfer
back in the day. Before you starting thinking I know anything about women
athletes from the fifties, you should realize that the only way I know that
is from when I pawned my dad's stamp collection last winter. She and some
other old fogies had croaked and got themselves on stamps about ancient
athletes or something. Pat And Mike is full of people that play tennis and golf who I assume were famous in their
day, but since they aren't on Sportscenter every night, I have no idea who they were. Besides, could any of them hold a
candle to the likes of John McEnroe? I mean, have you seen him hosting the hit
new ABC game show The Chair? Everything is going okay until Pat notices her beau in the crowd. Then she
falls completely apart and loses the game. In the biz, we call this choking
and it happens to every athlete at some time or another, except of course the
really great ones, who thrive on pressure and are actually worth the money
they're paid. After the big defeat, Collier gets in her face and tries to
downplay everything and they get on a train to go somewhere that he wants to
go, but at the last minute, she chucks all her baggage out of the train's
window and jumps off the train. She's going to the big city to see if she can
make it playing pro tennis and pro golf. To me, the best part is that Collier
just stayed on the train and went on his merry way. Did he just figure he'd
look her up in the sports pages or something? Hey, maybe I'll see you at
Wimbledon, take care! Seems to be a bit of a strange relationship going on
there. Once in town, Pat looks up her old, crooked sports pal, Mike. Mike has
a horse named Nellie and boxer named Hucko that he promotes. Hucko is a big
dumb galoot that Mike constantly berates and tears down telling him that he
made him and without him Hucko would be nothing. I would comment about how
utterly silly that type of motivation is, but I suspect Don King probably uses
it to this day (I'm sure he just has his fighters' best interest at heart).
Pat tells Mike that she's ready to sign on, which is interesting since she was
so aghast at his suggestion that she rig the golf match. Why would you sign up
with a promoter that you thought was crooked if you wanted your career to be on
the up and up? It seems like the movie just had Mike be that way, so he could
be a little roguish and contrast better with the prissy Pat, because he doesn't
ever try to make her fix games and in fact, gets into a fight with some guys
that want her to.  Once Pat signs on with Mike, Mike makes it clear that he is in charge of her
life, making sure that she doesn't drink or smoke or do any stuff that athletes
aren't supposed to do (unless they're in the NBA and it's weed). She's a bit
put off by his busybodying, but Mike doesn't let that bother him and this leads
to some by now standard bickering between Tracy and Hepburn. It isn't really
bad dialogue or anything, it just doesn't seem fresh or have any real snap to
it. Probably a little like watching Bud and Lou do their "Who's On First"
routine after they've done it 5000 times before. She goes on tour with him and
we get to see a bunch of extended scenes where she does her golf and tennis
thing. Everything goes well, until one tennis match when Collier shows up
(Where has he been? Isn't he thinking that there are problems in the
relationship since she's all over the country and he doesn't seem to be in
regular contact with her? Sure, that's the perfect situation if you're
married, but not if you're still dating). Once Pat sees Collier in the
audience at her tennis match, the wheels comes off. They use plenty of neat
sight gags here to communicate Pat's level of distress. The net is twenty feet
tall, her opponent is really big and uses an oversized racket while she uses a
racket a midget would have problems winning with. Eventually she's put out of
her misery when she catches a ball in the face (she sees lots of balls coming at
her!) and she finally comes to in the locker room, where she has one of her
patented sore loser breakdowns. We see how the movie has to end once she
breaks down here. She will have to have another big match and see Collier and
win in spite of his slick-haired presence, all the while acknowledging her
feelings for Mike. Along the way, she imparts some wisdom into the dullard
Hucko. Hucko has been losing his fights and so Pat tells him that the real
fight is with himself and all that self-help ga ga. Of course, this is also
her problem and once she realizes that (and admits her feelings for Mike) then
Collier can stand on the eighteenth hole holding the flag in nothing but heels
and garters and she'll still have no problem sinking the long putt. After singled handedly defeating a pair of gangsters that's trying to force
Mike to fix Pat's big golf game (Is this an episode of The Equalizer?), she and
Mike prepare for the big match. At night, Mike sneaks into her room to check
on her and make sure she is tucked in properly. She wakes up and realizes that
he really cares for her. As he's leaving her room, Collier sees him and gets
the wrong idea (actually it's the right idea, it's just that Pat and Mike are
not that far along in their relationship). Collier
goes into her room to check on her and she freaks out, thinking that he's some
type of attacker. She is still sleepy and she calls out for Mike instead of
Collier,
so this cinches things between all the parties. Mike and Pat admit that they
have feelings for each other and Collier is out of the picture (but is still a
big enough pud to hang around and watch the match, probably figuring that if
he's going to get dumped he may as well try to ruin her golf game), but she
makes the big shot after seeing him stare at her (she then sees Mike winking at
her, which would make me blow my shot, but apparently not her). Hepburn and
Tracy are always a solid screen team, even in their weaker outings and while
this
one isn't bad, it still seems like a second tier retread. There was way too
much emphasis on all these sports events and showing off Hepburn serving and
chipping and whatever it is the fancy-types do in tennis and golf. This seemed
to
take the place of scenes that could have been better used to fill in the
characters. Tracy's character seems especially lacking in any depth, reduced
to making pithy little comments comparing relationship problems to his love of
lobster. The rest of the the movie seems about as thin, coming off as merely
an excuse to team these two up again and for some reason to showcase Hepburn's
questionable athletic ability (does anyone really believe she could play
tennis with real pros with the form she was using in some of her scenes).
Perhaps they were trying to reposition her as an action hero or something. If
it sounds like the movie is crappy, that really isn't the case. It's an
enjoyable little diversion lacking in anything new or memorable, but will
probably be enjoyed by fans of the Tracy/Hepburn team. You can't help but see
it and compare it to other earlier efforts from these two and whether that's
fair or not (and I think it is) Pat And Mike does not measure up to them.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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