UNLIMITED STREAMING
WITH PRIME VIDEO
TRY 30-DAY TRIAL
Home > Drama >

The Phenom

The Phenom (2016)

June. 24,2016
|
5.2
| Drama

Major-league rookie pitcher Hopper Gibson has lost his focus. After choking on the mound, he’s sent down to the minors and prescribed sessions with an unorthodox sports therapist, who pushes him to uncover the origins of his anxiety.

...

Watch Trailer

Cast

Similar titles

Reviews

betty dalton
2016/06/24

Even if you dont like baseball you could still appreciate this picture about an aspiring young baseball talent who has lost his confidence at his game and isnt able to throw winning curve balls anymore. Having already signed a million dollar contract this baseball kid is under tremendous pressure to perform. Enter Paul Giamatti as a mental coach who is appointed to get the kid's winning streak back. Will he succeed or will he fail? I wont tell.The Phenom is in nothing comparable to other sport movies. Baseball is just an excuse to let two people talk on screen with eachother about FEELINGS. Everything in this movie takes its time. As if the movie itself reflects the rut the baseball kid is in. Slow scenes, many pauses. Many widely spun out scenes about relationships. Not at all a sports movie. If you expect a cool,fast movie about a baseball hero, you will be disappointed. If you wanna see how sportheroes mentally can struggle with loosing, then this is the movie for you.It is a movie about a young kids own mindgames: thoughts he throws at himself and keep hurting again and again. Man is one's own worst enemy and this sweet baseball kid is struggling to deal with that. 10 points for realism and originality. Less points for the drama. Âverage of a well deserved 8. This movie about coping with loosing is a winner!I want to dedicate a special paragraph to producer, writer and director Noah Bushel. This young man has achieved something very unique: he has written EVERYONE of his directed movies! Few great directors have achieved that. I urge you to look at his other work too, because of his total control over his own movies. Everytime he produces something it is unique. Very interesting director of whom we certainly will see more surprising movie gems!

More
dansview
2016/06/25

I've read the reviews and no one got it. Sports are for "alpha" personalities. You can't overthink your duties in a sports game. If you do, you will doom your efforts. The father character understand this, to an extreme.The kid, our protagonist, does not. The psychologist does a little. Everything else was just a waste of time. Not only that, but you have to get an actor who looks like a 100 mph pitcher. I really like that Simmons guy, but he doesn't look like a major league pitcher. Even the father mentioned that repeatedly.Life is separated between the alphas, the betas, and the omegas. Which one are you? Having talent is not enough to make you a major league great. You have to have the mental game down as well.There was some good dialogue and some decent scenes, but much of it was disjointed. What was the point of the robbery? To show that he is a rube?Why does the girl even like him? He doesn't show any charm. Why did the mom go with the dad in high school? Was it just because he was a jock and a star, or did he show promise as a human being?This movie sucked, but had potential.

More
rdimps
2016/06/26

Too bad I was actually tricked in by watching this. I mean, come on, the cast of characters, the short story plot, and even the cover of the movie which pretty much tells you that this is gonna be a baseball movie. And I love baseball movies because they are feel good movies. The Natural, Moneyball, Major League, Field of Dreams. Only this is not a baseball movie.....at all. Not one game is played. Occasionally you will see the main character throw a few pitches to his coach, or his dad, but that's basically it. You see this amazing rookie pitcher make it to the big leagues, but because of a game in which he goes out of control, (Of course we never get to see this), he winds up talking to a Sports shrink. The movie is frustrating because it goes from flashback to present to flashback. It's mostly a dialogue movie with no plot. I won't go into the movie details. If you like wasting an hour and a half of your time watching a dialogue movie with no point, by all means go see it. But if you watch this because of the reasons why I watched it, don't bother, trust me you will be disappointed.

More
abadguy44
2016/06/27

I went into this movie with the expectations of a more orthodox time line. About a young pitching prodigy from his early days in High School to his troubled journey in the Major Leagues. The story scratched the surface of his overbearing Father and his mental state as to why he was having trouble throwing strikes, But for me, the movie never tied it all together. All the characters in the movie were never fully developed enough to explain the reason for Hopper's problem. I was waiting for the progress made by Hopper in his sessions with Dr. Mobley playing out on the field or the root of the problem being revealed finally at the end. That never materialized. The ending left you wanting more meat on the bone. I was very disappointed with this movie because it had a good premise but was too superficially told to make any impact on the viewer.

More