The Natural has everything going for it--directing, acting, cinematography, and especially Randy Newman's iconic score.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 4, 2024

It shouldn't work, but it does. It’s a great-looking movie with a true movie star at its center and a cast chock-full of fantastic character actors (40th anniversary)

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 17, 2024

...ultimately fares much, much better than the often astonishingly tedious Bernard Malamud novel on which its based...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 21, 2022

Barry Levinson's 'The Natural' is a sports drama that gives me a pleasant time for two hours that roll like a pitcher's fastball in the postseason. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Feb 27, 2021

When "The Natural" opened in 1984, I thought it was the best baseball movie ever made. Thirty-six years later (and after countless "Bull Durham" reruns), I find it falls far short of that original designation, but it's still got merit.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 13, 2020

The script is one shockingly drab line after another, and nothing in the expensive 1930s period design can cover up the shabbiness of the moviemaking.

| Jul 15, 2020

The lead's unwavering integrity is the movie's heart: The Natural does not glamorize vice but triumphs over it with a wholesome finale.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 15, 2020

The Natural is a mythic and mesmerizing movie about America's national pastime and the heroism of a lonely individualist.

| Jul 15, 2020

Some of the subject matter can be grim and mature in nature, but the PG rating ensures Levinson has delivered a contemplative fairy tale for the whole family to enjoy and learn from.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jul 15, 2020

Robert Redford is at his best as middle-aged rookie Roy Hobbs. But Wilford Brimley all but steals the show as crusty but laconic skipper Pop Fisher.

| Apr 2, 2020

The allure of second chances speaks to anyone's hope for redemption, in any stage of their life. In The Natural, Roy Hobbs's second chance ... is realized at a stage when the character is inching toward the point of no return.

| Oct 19, 2017

It's all very corny and much of it's almost alarmingly overbaked... Yet it works.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 26, 2015

The scouting report on The Natural has to read: lots of tools but no heart.

Full Review | May 6, 2014

If you can suspend disbelief and let yourself be drawn into the movie, you'll be rewarded with an emotional and heart-warming experience that will have you cheering.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 6, 2014

Being a baseball fan involves repeatedly experiencing exquisite pain and exquisite joy. Well, there's a lot of both in The Natural.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 19, 2013

Barry Levinson deviates considerably from the wry, ironic tone of Malamud's novel, and if the film is mildly enjoyable it's due to the acting of the supporting cast and polished production values.

| Original Score: B- | Aug 20, 2011

An otherwise fine sports fantasy is dragged down by an overindulgence in sentimentality.

| Mar 25, 2011

Levinson must have felt he had to swing for the fences. He can be forgiven for choking up with all The Natural's fans looking on dubiously. In fairness, the official scorer must credit him with a single. And Redford with an RBI.

| Mar 21, 2011

...silly, repetitive, episodic, mannered...

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 13, 2010

unabashedly sentimental and grand in its themes of goodness, honor, tenacity, and forgiveness

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 14, 2010