Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game

A few years ago a guy made a rather amazing ball machine that played music. Over the ensuing months, my FB feed was packed with "have you seen this?" It was sweet, it was funny, it was relentless.

And it's about to happen again. But for the record, yes, I've seen this, on the day it came out. My wife was reluctant at first - on seeing the title, she presumed it would be a nerd-fest like "A Fistful of Quarters - The King Of Kong" - but she was pulled onboard in the first 30 seconds.

We loved all of it. A piece of history told better than I could, and with a lot of stuff I didn't know, and a lot of Hollywood "treatment" to liven it up, and a determination make sure the audience knew the truth anyhow.

You don't have to be a pinball person to love this movie. It's beautifully shot, well directed, with credible characters and a story most of us haven't heard.

But if you love pinball as I do, it's even better.

This film left me feeling warm and fuzzy inside, without overdoing it. It takes a very interesting, relatively unimportant piece of American history and turns it into a wonderful story. Light without being superficial, educative without being preachy. A perfect pick me up on a rainy day.

The sets, clothing and actors are wonderful, the seventies are beaming from the screen, making me nostalgic for times I have never lived in. It feels very hollywood, which emphasises the American-ness of pinball, bringing you even more in the spirit of the movie.

The only thing that makes it a bit cringy at times (at least for me), is the breaking of the fourth wall. It's rarely done well, and I don't think this movie needed it. But again, that is just a personal preference, and it does add some extra information.

I would recommend this movie to anyone, especially those who like fun, interesting tidbits about history.

"You can't win. The point is to have fun." So says a young college student in a bar to fellow student (and Pinball-curious) Roger Sharpe. I suddenly thought about how over the course of my life I'd heard similarly simple (and yet arguably equally profound) sayings by Joseph Campbell and Wayne Dyer (and others)... but I'd never heard anyone use Pinball as a metaphor for how to live life to its fullest.

Now I know what you're probably thinking: How hokey! Especially if there are more such thinly-disguised metaphors in the movie (and there are). But somehow they don't come across as hokey or off-putting, but rather -- as I indicated -- almost profound. I guess this is due to the skill of the actors and the scene writing, including how the sayings seem gently sprinkled onto (while also organically arising from) the (often humorous) scenes. (By contrast, grandma's roller-coaster metaphor near the end of "Parenthood" was so in-your-face that (to me at least) only Steve Martin's extreme reaction, followed by making a following scene almost seem like it was taking place on a roller coaster, made it work.)

The movie mostly takes place in the 1970's, when Roger was in this twenties, but it starts with a present-day (70-ish) Roger Sharpe answering an interviewers questions, a la old Rose in "Titanic". And occasionally he does voice-overs, or we momentarily come back to the present day for him to answer a question from the interviewer. But more often he suddenly appears (a la "Annie Hall") in a 1970's scene with his younger self and others (generally unnoticed by his younger self and the other characters) to talk to us about the scene, sometimes adding additional information (usually humorous) or commentary -- including at times correcting the way "Hollywood" has embellished the moment!

My favorite example is at a critical point in the movie -- I won't say exactly what to avoid being too spoilery. Suffice to say that when the moment goes well there is (as Monty Python used to say) much rejoicing. To the point where I almost expected to see (a la "The Natural") a light fixture explode, raining pseudo-fireworks down on everybody as a grinning cherubic kid looks like he too is about to literally explode with delight. Fortunately before things could get that nauseating the present-day Roger Sharpe cuts in and makes them re-do the scene reaction like it actually happened: still very exuberant, but much more realistic and true to life and ultimately thus far more meaningful. For, as Sharpe indicates, there are few things in life more meaningful than a getting a person to change a long-held belief... and few things more satisfying and beautiful than beholding the subtle look in his or her eye at that exact moment.

There is an occasional running bit throughout the movie whereby the present-day interviewer asks present-day Sharpe to get back to the Pinball story (when he starts to "digress" to much about his girlfriend Ellen and her kid). But then at the end, when the Pinball story is over and present-day Sharpe is about to get up from the chair, the interviewer stops him and asks him about what happened with the girl. Which is exactly what we in the audience wanted, as the movie is so well done that by we've now become as invested in their relationship (or even more so) as in the original Pinball story.

(Speaking of how well done this movie is, every actor is superb, as are the writing, direction, cinematography, sound and so forth. I have omitted the traditional parenthetical mention of everyone because I figure by the time someone reads this user review they are probably already familiar from the IMDB listing itself and other reviews who everyone is.)

Anyway, I'm ashamed to admit that when the present-day Roger Sharpe told the interviewer how well things worked out (slight spoiler below), the cynic in me said "oh, come on" and started to wonder if the whole girlfriend story had been seriously embellished -- or perhaps even been made up out of whole cloth.

After all, I'm less than a generation younger than Sharpe, and every single one of my friends from high school is either divorced (and generally with tremendous hatred toward their ex spouse!) or, like me, never found anyone to begin with and now live fairly barren lives. Now granted this is probably in part due to my friends and I being raised in the decade of stagflation, with endless talk of the energy crisis and the alleged dire population explosion and so forth. We were encouraged to postpone marriage and kids and focus on survival (ideally through good grades, a college degree and good-paying job). It was radically different than, say, for the generation before mine, when apparently (from what I understand the 50's were like) people tended to get married and have kids right after high school. But for me and my friends, we assumed that by waiting we'd be far better off in the long run. After all, it was hard to think of marriage and kids when (as in my family) the gas or electricity was occasionally shut off, along with the occasional eviction. (Not to mention the family car being only used by my dad to get to work... NOT for us teens to "waste gas" by going on dates.) Of course we all assumed that someday we'd get married and have kids... but for many of us someday never came.

So seeing Sharpe fall into (seemingly without much effort on his part) such a strong love story -- complete with an 11-year-old pinball-loving kid -- with somebody who was so helpful in his efforts to achieve his (as well as her own) dreams (via everything from her touch typing skills to her inspirational know-what-you-want-and-go-for-it attitude) seemed to me like Hollywood schmaltz. And thus as the lights went up and the credits rolled part of me was wondering why the filmmakers had apparently given into schmaltz despite the entire movie before that overtly (via present-day Sharpe) reigning in any such attempts to "go Hollywood".

Thankfully I had the tremendous good fortune to be at a screening that was followed by a Q&A session with the real Roger Sharpe. And when a few minutes into it he suddenly introduced his wife (and mentioned the two kids that they had indeed had together) the entire audience spontaneously and vigorously applauded. And while I can't say for certain as my vision had become obscured, through the tears in my eyes I got the sense that there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

Olympia, WA

We wore the clothes. We stretched to places we'd never before seen or known. Polyester. Damn. I want that sweater.

We played the game. We hoped to win. We watched the steel ball bounce, and dance and ping and sway.

The Greyhound bus depot had a cafe and one pinball machine. We learned how to tilt, to cheat, and to love the game. Sorry for the cheating. Thank you for the winning.

We ate. Sometimes it was food, and other times it was sustenance. Mostly it was survival. Pinball gave us hope.

Corn dogs.

The Future was ours, until it wasn't.

Amen. God. Whatever. Pinball is alive and it lives within all of us. If you have a machine to sell, we'll buy it. May Be.

Maybe like a 7.5? The acting is good, the story is solid and interesting (you even learn things, historical elements, etc.), the movie making is good, and there's awesome 70's styling.

What really makes the movie a lot better than what it would have been should it have had standard story telling, was self-derision, making fun of itself, correcting itself, and inserting historical snippets. The movie includes a lot of small clichés, though makes fun of those clichés at the same time. There are some other clichés that were left unattended, but I guess that's okay.

On top of it being a generally good movie, I don't really see what there is to say. Should you watch it? I recommend it. Are there flaws in the movie? None other than small clichés, etc. Does it feel like one of the many "success story" films? Yes, it does. Maybe it's the slight lack of originality in the "success story bioflick" genre that lowers the score for me, but then again, what they did with the material, they did really well, and the story is certainly worth a movie.

I hesitated a long time between a 7 and an 8. In any case, you get the just that it's a good movie, though not that it will necessarily blow your mind or change your life.