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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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A Great Baseball Movie.
A highly enjoyable baseball movie. John Goodman give a good potrayal of the famous slugger.From his rookie year with the Boston Red Sox,the New York Yankees,and his retirement from the Boston Braves.Watch how he responds to a bad call from the plate umpire,saying he ought to get his eyes and ears checked.Babe Ruth was a pitcher with the Boston Red Sox,and in his last year with the Boston Braves,but played outfield with the New York Yankess.Now maybe the film exaggerates the antics of Ruth, but Goodman's potrayal makes them beliveable.
Rating: 
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too close to a caricature
Be advised that after 45 minutes of the movie my 8 year-old son and I gave up. Goodman seems to have been given the license to "go for broke" with a "larger than life" approach, that leaves little for the viewer to consider of Ruth's actual life. With the broadest of strokes, Goodman plays Ruth self-consciously; the mis-en-scenes are without any surprises and Hollywood-predictable.
Too little was shown to give us the sense of Ruth-as-athlete and the milieu of early 20th century baseball, a fascinating story that awaited telling but missed the opportunity here.
Rating: 
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Good baseball movie, but not what it should have been
Probably the most famous baseball player of all-time, Babe Ruth should definitely have had a movie done about him, and "The Babe" is a decent effort, but is not without flaws. First, there are many inaccuracies in this movie, but I won't go into that too deep. At the end of the movie (1936), The Babe is spitting up blood during the game between the Braves and the Pirates, but Ruth did not pass away from cancer until 1948. Certainly Ruth did not have cancer in 1936.. There's many other things, but I don't need to list them all.
But the thing that really bothered me about this movie is that Ruth is portrayed as nothing more than a bumbling idiot while he was with the Red Sox. While this is good for a few laughs, it really took away from my enjoyment of the first half of the movie. I'm thinking "THIS guy is Babe Ruth??" However, as soon as Ruth is sold to the Yankees, he becomes much more intelligent and doesn't act like a complete dumba$$ all of the time. At this point, the movie takes a much more serious turn, and in my opinion, the last half of the movie is EXCELLENT. The film delves into the Babe's issues both on and off the field, and definitely has some touching moments, and a strong finish to the movie. Too bad the first half of the movie was so silly.. So overall, 1 star for the first half of the movie, 5 stars for the second half, for a final score of 3 stars.
I thought that John Goodman was very good as The Babe, although yes, he was much larger (weight) than Babe Ruth really was at any point in his life, but let's not get hung up on details. Goodman was a good fit for the part, and Kelly McGillis was excellent in the supporting role of Claire Hudson.
All of that said, if you're a true baseball historian, you will find plenty to complain about with "The Babe", but if you just want a fun baseball movie to watch, then I would definitely recommend it. I would hope that someday a movie is made about Babe Ruth that is more historically accurate, and has a much more grand feel like the movie 61*, because this telling of Babe Ruth's life just isn't quite the home run that it should have been.
Rating: -
As great as the Babe was
It is the best film about baseball I have ever seen, based on the real story of one of the most important icons of the twentieth century.
Rating: -
Truth Stretching, and All-Out Fabrication
I saw this movie as a kid when it came out and liked it, but since then it has gone through something of a critical reevaluation. Goodman is an entertaining actor, but there are just too many factual errors, and they arguably detract too much from the film's quality.
As was noted elsewhere by other reviewers, Goodman's Ruth does not represent a great athlete. Ruth was not overweight growing up, nor in his early days as a ballplayer. Ruth's weight did fluctuate, but few to this day know that Ruth had 123 career stolen bases, and actually led the Yankees in steals one year (1923). Goodman's character was unreasonably slow, and at the end was portrayed as unable to run the bases even on a home run. This might work as light humor, but it certainly is not fact. Also of note, Goodman was a natural born right-hander that had to learn how to bat and throw left-handed like Ruth for the purpose of acting in this film. This makes Goodman look awkward, and even less like an athlete on a few occasions.
On the other hand, I understand as a general rule that playwrights and filmmakers are given a certain "artistic license," and that it is alright on some occasions to stretch the truth for a purpose. The bloated portrayal of Ruth might be one such example, no matter how erroneous it is from a factual standpoint. Even so, many of the inaccuracies have no discernable purpose. Case in point, "Jumpin' Joe" Dugan was never a teammate of Ruth's in Boston, only in New York. It is also known that Ruth did not have any home runs in 1914, but according to this movie he had one that year. In addition, Ruth was not the first player to hit a home run at Forbes Field. The list could go on for a while, and there seems to be no reason why the filmmakers decided to alter such facts. "Jumpin' Joe" may have been put in there just to have a veteran teammate friend for Ruth, but Dugan started his career three years after Ruth did, so he could not have been a veteran to Ruth at any point in his career. They could have picked someone else to fill this fictitious "veteran teammate" role, or scrapped the idea all together. The 1914 home run served the purpose of providing a dramatic rookie year home run, but this scene could have been set in 1915 instead, and with some modifications perhaps could have been just as dramatic. Lastly, regarding Forbes Field, the announcer could have said a true statement along the lines of "Forbes Field is a pitchers ballpark, not many home runs are hit here folks," as opposed to the inaccurate "no one has ever hit a ball out of Forbes Field." The latter line had a dramatic effect, but was not necessary.
Also of note, Ruth's supposed "meeting" with gangster Alphonse Capone seemed a bit absurd, perhaps this was thrown in to get a glimpse of the times. Aside from the dicey misrepresentations though, there were a few strong qualities. The acting was strong overall, with Ruth's two wives giving strong performances, and Goodman's performance was not a total wash, even if there was too much over-the-top buffoonery. And let it be said that this film does have the ability to evoke some of the excitement of the game of baseball - a sentiment especially felt as an eight or nine year old viewer. But as said by Derek Armstrong, there were "too few ambitions toward a greatness to match that of its subject matter."
