Word: acerbic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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MAJOR LEAGUE. In a season thick with baseball flicks, David S. Ward gives us a rowdy, genial, cynical comedy about a fanciful Cleveland Indians team. Populated by rejects from the Mexican, minor and California penal leagues, this motley Tribe can't lose. The dialogue is breezy, the tone acerb and the climax as predictably uplifting as Rocky...
Major League doesn't try too hard or aim too high, but it is pretty funny. With its stock characters, breezy dialogue, dense ambience and instinct for easy emotions, it could serve as the pilot for a pay-cable sitcom. The film's tone is acerb, but its climax is as predictably uplifting as Rocky's and as surefire effective as Damn Yankees...
...Mixed in with these are opinionated questioners, such as George F. Will and Robert Novak, who bring decided views over from their editorial-page columning. Put together Donaldson's blunt demeanor and Will's ideological questions on This Week with David Brinkley, and Brinkley, who once seemed acerb, comes out courtly by contrast. But then Brinkley was never as fiercely acerbic as his reputation; the targets of his own wry remarks tend to be "politicians," "bureaucrats," "generals," but only rarely individuals cited by name...