The Sandlot

Kids will understand this stuff. If you can remember your younger, goofier roots, so will you. Sandlot isn't well made but it's alive with dopey, summertime spirit. Read full review

This “Field of Dreams” field has been plowed so many times that the land is no longer arable. Isn’t it time to cultivate a few new cliches? Read full review

Nothing about his modest coming-of-age comedy demands anything like this awestruck approach. Read full review

The comedy is broad, cartoonish, and quite funny in a faux "Little Rascals" manner. The movie is almost completely derivative, but that's part of the fun. Read full review

In The Sandlot's nostalgia for simpler times, a single-sex world seems to be a key component. Read full review

This is definitely a post-"Field of Dreams" movie, at home in an era that specializes in building ersatz old parks, like the honey at Camden Yards. I love that place, even if it's more theme park than ball yard (I also love theme parks). But "The Sandlot" isn't a theme park or a ball yard; it's a con job. Read full review

It's lacking in eventfulness and drama, but there's a sweetness in it that places it a cut above most synthetic children's films. As a writer and director, Evans doesn't always know where to go with his material, but at least there's some feeling behind it, and this sometimes rescues it from its becalmed predictability. [7 Apr 1993, p.49]

It's hard to believe that a bunch of scrappy kids would really be scared of a big dog, which leaves the premise of this film floundering. However the kids prove to be plucky enough to give the film some kind of motivation but the direction lacks in humour or excitement. Read full review

Sweet and sincere, the film is also a remarkably shallow wade, rife with incident and slim on substance. Read full review

Chock-a-block with cute reminiscence - which is a shame, because if it weren't so knowing, this would be quite a likeable little comedy about nothing in particular. Read full review

Has enough dog slobber, curdled hurl and toe-jam jokes to keep its target audience amused. Older kids and overgrown ones too probably will notice that nothing much ever happens in this belabored suburban variation on "The Little Rascals." Read full review

After a "Porky's"-style segment dealing with puppy lust, the film then segues to its better second half, hitting its stride when a ball signed by the revered Babe Ruth must somehow be retrieved from behind the fence. Read full review