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By Sandra Olmsted

In director Craig Gillespie’s biopic, Million Dollar Arm, buddies JB Bernstein (Jon Hamm) and Aash (Aasif Mandvi), strike out, literally, on their own after working for a big sports management company and desperately need Popo (Rey Maualuga), football star, to sign with them, but he demands a signing bonus that JB and Aash simply don’t have.

On the verge of loosing it all, Aash insists on watching Indian Cricket while they drown their sorrows. Although JB thinks it is a stupid game, he eventually hatches a scheme to find a baseball pitcher in Indian and develop the talent under a management contract to his and Aash’s company. They get backing to run the contest in India from Chang (Tzi Ma) and hopefully open the Indian market to sports merchandise.

The winner and the runner up will get cash prizes and trips to the US to be coached by Tom House (Bill Paxton), who takes a psychological approach to training pitchers, and Doug (Gregory Alan Williams), House’s assistant coach. Because Aash is married with toddler twins, JB, a confirmed bachelor who loves his single life, heads to India to run the “Million Dollar Arm” contest, leaving his expensive home in the care of his guest-house tenant, Brenda (Lake Bell), a beautiful medical student.

Once in India, JB has fish-out-of-water experiences in negotiating the Indian business system; fortunately, Vivek (Darshan Jariwala), his Indian office manager, knows the ropes, and Amit (Pitobash), who coaches baseball in India, inserts himself into the contest. When the first rounds of the contest don’t go well, Ray (Alan Arkin), a veteran baseball scout, joins the team.

Chang gave JB and Aash only one year to mount the contest, find the two players, develop their talent to pitch baseball, and get a major league tryout,. The clock is ticking on JB and Aash’s future, and they will have to swing for the fences to keep their dream of running their own sports management company and maintaining their lifestyles.

Eventually, two players emerge, but Rinku (Suraj Sharma, the star of Life of Pi) and Dinesh (Madhur Mittal from Slumdog Millionaire), still have to prove they can learn to love the American pastime and negotiate the strangeness of coming from a third world nation to the high tech, culturally overwhelming life in Los Angeles. Also, they are only 18 years old; however, they aren’t the only people who have a lot to learn.

As sports films go, Million Dollar Arm defies the typical sports film by not focusing extensively on the sports action even though it has some in the contest in India and House’s training of Rinku and Dinesh. However, screenwriter Thomas McCarthy’s reveals the business of sports management and maintains the standard plot of the underdog coming from behind to win, but in unusually ways.

In addition to Rinku and Dinesh, who need to learn to pitch and to adjust, many characters have their own dreams to chase and/or problems to overcome, and often they don’t know what they want or need. The film has a little romance, some funny moments, and surprisingly, some very touching moments, but it is predictable especially if one knows the real story of these two players. Those less knowledgeable about baseball can invest emotionally in the suspense of whether the likable Rinku and Dinesh will succeed and have the money to change the lives of their struggling families at home.

The excellent cast captures the characters with solid performances, especially St. Louis native, Jon Hamm, and Arkin, who is delightfully as the curmudgeonly retiree. Gillespie directs the action and the emotional moments for maximum effect while developing the theme of business versus people management.

The film’s PG rating is in keeping with the theme of opening the Indian market and allows Disney to market the film in India, which has a large, conservative moviegoing population and motion picture industry. Million Dollar Arm, a Disney release, is rated PG for mild language and some suggestive content and runs a bit long at 124 minutes. Million Dollar Arm opens in theaters May 16 and well worth seeing. More of Olmsted’s reviews are available at <www.thecinematicskinny.com>.