The Natural Backdrop Blur
The Natural Poster

The Natural

"He lived for a dream that wouldn't die."

An unknown middle-aged batter named Roy Hobbs with a mysterious past appears out of nowhere to take a losing 1930s baseball team to the top of the league.

Top Cast

  • Robert Redford

    Robert Redford

    Roy Hobbs

  • Robert Duvall

    Robert Duvall

    Max Mercy

  • Glenn Close

    Glenn Close

    Iris Gaines

  • Kim Basinger

    Kim Basinger

    Memo Paris

  • Wilford Brimley

    Wilford Brimley

    Pop Fisher

  • Barbara Hershey

    Barbara Hershey

    Harriet Bird

  • Robert Prosky

    Robert Prosky

    The Judge

  • Richard Farnsworth

    Richard Farnsworth

    Red Blow

  • Joe Don Baker

    Joe Don Baker

    The Whammer

Overview

An unknown middle-aged batter named Roy Hobbs with a mysterious past appears out of nowhere to take a losing 1930s baseball team to the top of the league.

Rating

6.9 / 10
668 Reviews
2 Popular

2 Reviews

  • John Chard
    John Chard
    8.5 Apr 24, 2015

    The Wonder of Wonderboy. The Natural is directed by Barry Levinson and adapted to screenplay by Roger Towne & Phil Dusenberry from the novel written by Bernard Malamud. It stars Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Wilford Brimley, Barbara Hershey, Robert Prosky and Richard Farnsworth. Music is by Randy Newman and cinematography by Caleb Deschanel. The Natural is a wistful sports movie, one that asks every person who views it to buy into the whimsy and mythologising on show. If able to do that then it's a film of beguiling beauty, awash with strength of the human spirit and of luscious technical credits. The Arthurian core to Roy Hobbs' (Redford a superb presence yet calmness personified) second chance ensures we always know this is fanciful stuff, but that's just fine, we are in Field of Dreams territory here and fans of such fare are rewarded royally. Period art design, photography and musical score are grade "A", snuggling up nicely with a support cast to Redford that is of high end proportions. If it's in you and you know what sort of film to expect, you may well, come the end, be punching the air whilst having a tear in your eye. Lovely film making. 8.5/10

  • Peter McGinn
    Peter McGinn
    7 Sep 19, 2020

    Many, many years ago when I was a bit of a sports fan, I remember reading stories about scouts who had seen athletes in the olden days like Roy Hobbs. Players who could hit a ball a mile or throw a hundred mile per hour fastball, but who never made it to the big league for some reason. But of course, this movie is based on a novel by Bernard Malamud, though there are hints of actual events here and there. It is an entertaining movie, presenting baseball as America’s game and therefore, ultimately, above corruption. It has an old timey feel, perhaps even older than the 1939 setting that is presented. The movie is less gloomy than the book, and I guess the purists don’t like that, but for me, life is gloomy enough and the mood and ending were just fine with me. (And I did read the book.) Since actual events and people from bygone days are cleaned up and mythologized for our history books, why get upset when fictional stories are purified with a rose colored lens?

Trailers & Clips

Recommendations

Eight Men Out

Buck Weaver and Hap Felsch are young idealistic players on the Chicago White Sox, a pennant-winning team owned by Charles Comiskey - a penny-pinching, hands-on manager who underpays his players and treats them with disdain. And when gamblers and hustlers discover that Comiskey's demoralized players are ripe for a money-making scheme, one by one the team members agree to throw the World Series. But when the White Sox are defeated, a couple of sports writers smell a fix and a national scandal explodes, ripping the cover off America's favorite pastime.

Eight Men Out

6.9 1988