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Sick Product of a Sick System

How sad is this?

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Filmmaker Christopher Browne documents the mission of a group of middle-aged bowlers as they attempt to revitalize the sport and get the television-watching public interested in it again.In the midst of this, the Professional Bowlers Association is purchased by a trio of Microsoft programmers who hire Steve Miller, a Nike marketing guru. Can the new money and the expert bring this nostalgic game back to life? (Seeing as I am writing this in 2015 and the film is from 2004, my guess is no.) We do get to meet some interesting characters, like Walter Ray Williams who uses his knowledge of physics to excel at both bowling and horseshoes. His house is practically a mansion, and then you are left wondering: how much money is there in professional bowling? Apparently a lot.

Given the dearth of of movies out there that treat bowling in a serious light, this documentary is well worth watching. I would definitely recommend it to anyone considering a career in professional bowling.This documentary delves into the psyche behind the bowlers and the PBA commissioner. All in all, this analysis is actually very entertaining and informative. The only parts of this documentary that I found lacking was a piece on the fans and the popularity of the sport world wide. PBA fans run the gauntlet among society and it would have been interesting to see a cross section of these fans. It would also have been interesting to show some of the international PBA regulars that compete on tour (they did show a brief piece on England's Stuart Williams but should have included Ameletto Monacelli or Mika Kouvunemi).Again, this does not detract from this documentary. In fact, since there is such a lack of quality material available on this topic it is easy to see what was left out :)This is a good film and I recommend it without hesitation.

I need to start by saying that this is a reasonably well-constructed film. The music in particular really worked well and fit the film. Also the selection of the four bowlers to highlight was a great choice as they all were so different. In particular, though depressing, Wayne Webb's profile was the most interesting to me--a guy who literally only had bowling and in the end he lost even that.However, I was not especially taken with the film for several reasons. Fundamentally, the film had the biggest "strike" against it with me in particular--I just didn't find the subject matter interesting. Sure, going bowling is great entertainment, but watching others bowl just didn't appeal to me. Additionally, I was turned off at how obnoxious and crude several of the people were--it was just hard to like them. In particular, the new PBA organizer came off, to me, as a bit of a jerk. Oddly, however, even with his and Pete Weber's rather raw language, I was surprised that the film was rated R--as I've heard much worse in several PG-13 films. Because many won't care much for bowling and still others will be turned off by the R rating, this film appears to have a very, very narrow audience.

Follows an attempt to revitalize the Professional Bowler's Association, which had fallen on hard times and was in danger of going bankrupt. The "revitalization" mainly seems to consist of a wholescale borrowing from extreme sports and the WWE and is mostly pretty silly to these eyes, although it's clear that a lot of other people dig it.The movie follows a bunch of old-time pro bowlers caught up in the transformation as they wend their way to a "world championship". Most interesting is Wayne Webb, a nice, fragile sort who devoted his life to the sport only to discover that it no longer has much use for him. Webb is a complicated guy, as much a victim of his own weaknesses as he is a victim of his world. It's nice to see that the movie doesn't cheapen him, reduce him down to a stereotypical one-dimension.The movie gets very exciting towards the end, even for this general bowling-skeptic. And it's full of sly jokes -- the best of which is a complex one: the movie begins with the assertion from some bowling fans that the movie KINGPIN presented an exaggerated, stereotypical view of bowling. By the end of the movie, though, we're well into KINGPIN's world, complete with middle-aged men doing crotch shots, cheesy introductions, and a lot of red lighting.