Stealing Home

This is one of my all time favorite movies. I'm amazed how so few people have heard of it. It's certainly a hidden treasure and I encourage people to give it a good look. It's very romantic, tragic and funny all at once. I particularly love Katy's character (played by Jody Foster). She is every girl and woman rolled into one...

This is one that I have in my collection at home that is one of my favorites. Those that I have loaned it to love it also. Jodie Foster was incredible as was the rest of the cast. It was a very sweet story and only wish it had received more recognition.

Athletes often face a rough mid-life period as their skills diminish and their careers wind down, since their sport so defines who and what they are. This topic has great potential for drama and poignancy, yet few good films have been made on the subject. This movie has a beautifully sad central love story, with aging minor league ballplayer Billy Wyatt (Mark Harmon) remembering the (then) older woman who inspired him so many years before (Jodie Foster), and trying to come to terms with the route his career and life have taken. So, he returns to his hometown, connects with his high school best friend (Harold Ramis) and starts looking into his past for answers, while much of the film plays out in flashback, recounting his bittersweet teen years, when everything was ahead of him but his own goals and motivations were elusive. What makes the film watchable is the complexity of the central relationship, as the mature Billy realizes that the most important woman in his life arrived when he was too young to appreciate her.

The movie is quite beautiful to look at with its clean-scrubbed view of small town life and high school sports, and the characters are engaging to follow. This is not a great movie by any means. Like Billy Wyatt himself, this one just misses hitting the major leagues, but it IS enjoyable in a low key way, and the lack of interesting movies on this potentially interesting subject makes it a bit special.

Stealing Home is a beautiful, moving, little picture, that will touch your heart. Fuelled by an amazing soundtrack and terrific performances by Mark Harmon, Jodie Foster, and esp William McNamara this is one film to definitely watch again and again.

Harmon plays the adult Billy Wyatt, who at the beginning of the film is a washed up former ballplayer, but a phone call with devastating news about the death of his former paramor cum babysitter Katie Chandler forces Billy to return home grow up and decide what to do with her ashes. Through flashbacks we learn about Katies free spirited life and her complex relationship with a young then a teenaged Billy.

This movie is one my all time favorites and after seeing it it should be yours too.

This was a surprisingly good late romantic drama, although given the potential cast, I should've expected good things in the first place. It is a nice little love story, an inspiring one, I suppose, that comes from a story with sad circumstances.

Filmed in Pennsylvania is the story of Billy Wyatt (Mark Harmon), a washed up minor league ballplayer living in some rundown town out West. He gets a call from his mother that a close childhood friend (Kate Chandler played by Jodi Foster) of his committed suicide the previous week and left in her will that he was to be responsible for her cremated remains. Wyatt is understandably reluctant to fulfill the obligation in part because he can't understand why he was the one she left her remains to, and he doesn't want to deal with the loss of a friend. So, the story is told in flashback as Wyatt travels home to deal with the situation and the loss of the slightly flaky, but daring girl he was once in love with.

William MacNamara (hubba! hubba!) is great as young Billy Wyatt, although everyone does a fine job. Jonathan Silverman, as teen Wyatt's best friend Appleby, plays his typical eager virgin role common to many of his mid/late 80s material, and adds a nice comic touch (and Harold Ramis continues the charm as the older Appleby). If you enjoy this cast, you should likely be pleased with the film. It's quite a wonderful, underrated drama, and was one of the few movies that I have rented recently and watched more than once.