62
Metascore
15 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80Los Angeles TimesKevin ThomasLos Angeles TimesKevin ThomasWard directs his actors as adroitly as he has written for them, and the vulnerability that he allows his three stars to reveal is really what makes the movie work. No one, not even baseball fans, should go to Major League hoping for "Bull Durham's" sex, raunch and sophistication. But "Major League" has its own ingratiating charm.
- 75Slant MagazineSlant MagazineComedy is the lasting virtue here—and more specifically what veteran screenwriter Ward (The Sting, Sleepless in Seattle) got out of a solid comic framework to make Major League continue to work beyond its odd collection of characters and a very specific setting.
- 75Chicago TribuneDave KehrChicago TribuneDave KehrMajor League is a movie that knows what it's up to. It skims along agreeable surfaces, expertly balancing its comedy with melodrama and fulfilling expectations right on schedule. As a movie, it`s a superior industrial product.
- 70Film ThreatFilm ThreatThere is nothing wrong with grade-A prime aged Angus beef, but sometimes all you really want is a McDonald’s hamburger. “Major League” is the quarter pounder with cheese of baseball movies. There’s nothing original about it, all the characters are stolen from other books or movies, but it understands the longings of a starved baseball town, and manages to wring out plenty of laughs from familiar situations.
- 70TimeRichard CorlissTimeRichard CorlissMajor League doesn't try too hard or aim too high, but it is pretty funny. With its stock characters, breezy dialogue, dense ambience and instinct for easy emotions, it could serve as the pilot for a pay-cable sitcom. The film's tone is acerb, but its climax is as predictably uplifting as Rocky's and as surefire effective as Damn Yankees'.
- 60EmpireAngie ErrigoEmpireAngie ErrigoIf you're looking for sophisticated wit keep going, but Major League is pleasant, undemanding fun and the most likely of the baseball movies to hit over here. You don't need to know what they're doing on the field, there are some amusing supporting performances, and everybody likes to see losers make a dream come true.
- 50Philadelphia InquirerCarrie RickeyPhiladelphia InquirerCarrie RickeySomebody should tell Ward that winning isn't everything. Character is. And this is what his movie lacks.
- 40Washington PostHal HinsonWashington PostHal HinsonMajor League is shamelessly formulaic. At the beginning, when it uses Randy Newman's ironic ode to Cleveland ("City of light, city of magic"), the movie has a lovely tone, and briefly, you feel a surge of anticipation, as if the people making it might actually have an original point of view or some feel for the game. All hope is dashed, though, early on, when you realize that they are cannibalizing every other baseball movie. (Newman wrote the music for "The Natural.") This is movie-making by rip-off.
- 40Orlando SentinelOrlando SentinelBut this movie is no more interested in Cleveland than it is, really, in baseball: It doesn't have the passion for the sport's curiosities that Bull Durham has, nor the feeling for the sport's heartbreak of Eight Men Out. Watching Major League may be better than watching no baseball at all. But its place in the annals of baseball-moviedom is bush league at best.