To the massive surprise of nearly everyone, Hardball was a huge post-September 11th hit Stateside when everything else got pulled. It’s unlikely though that this formulaic baseball movie will repeat the trick over here.

Basically an update of The Bad News Bears/Mighty Ducks formula, Hardball casts the multi-talented Keanu Reeves as a child-hating, chain-smoking loser with massive gambling debts. In order to keep the wolf from his door, he winds up teaching a bunch of deprived but cute inner-city kids for $500 a week. Naturally enough, he soon bonds with the little tykes, but as with Dangerous Minds, Music Of The Heart or any number of similar movies, get ready for ghetto tragedy.

In fairness, the film makes an attempt toward gritty urban realism, and the dialogue would in places put David Mamet to shame on the profanities scale, but the entire enterprise is too soon mired in mawkish melodrama. Keanu’s unintentionally hilarious funeral eulogy is a case in point, his characteristically robotic delivery not exactly helping matters either.

Piss-poor.