Have you ever been duped into watching a movie under false pretenses? Gibsonburg was that kind of movie. It may be classified as a sports movie and have baseball in it, but let me just be frank with you all, this was hardly a baseball movie. Instead, this was a rather dull movie about dumb luck.
Based on a true story of the country’s state champions, with a losing record, Gibsonburg focuses more on the events surrounding baseball games then the activities on the field. The story jumps ahead to several key ball games and the moments when lightning stuck and turned an impending defeat into victory.
I hate to knock all the people in this true story, but they seem so one-dimensional that I just never cared about them. Only a handful actually get character development, but like any jock, they have more flaws than a fake diamond.
I would congratulate these guys for doing the impossible, even though a handful of them didn’t deserve such high praise. There’s a lot of drinking and social problems amongst the guys on the team. Then there is this mysterious 1913 nickel sub-story that I don’t know if it is accurate. Quite honestly, I didn’t want to put effort into researching it. I get that this 12 million dollar nickel will save one guy’s family business, but this movie could have given us more baseball instead of scenes of crawling through a basement to find the coin, and the last visit to the bank to cash it in.
Stories like this make or break small-town America. Gibsonburg is in Ohio, and their only claim to fame may be this baseball championship. I come from a small town and understand the impact something like this would have, sadly I just didn’t feel it in this movie. 1/10
Ten Stars or Less 