Summer Catch

A working-class boy (Freddie Prinze Jr.) hangs his career dreams on an amateur baseball league and his romantic dreams on the upper-crust beauty (Jessica Biel) whose lawn he mows. Kevin Falls and John Gatins’ script is a deft blend of class-conscious romance with a boys-of-summer sports pep talk. It’s comfortably predictable (How do you suppose the big game, where everything is on the line, will turn out?), but a date movie like this—romance for the girls, baseball for the boys—is probably better off without too many surprises. Instead, there’s expert direction by Michael Tollin, pleasing performances by the two young stars (Prinze is at his best), and strong support from a solid supporting cast—Fred Ward as Prinze’s father, Bruce Davison as Biel’s, and Brian Dennehy as the hard-nosed coach.