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

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

The Natural is an impeccably made, but quite strange, fable about success and failure in America.

| Mar 21, 2007

I've just about had it with directors who use the mythic mode as an alibi for unshaded characterizations, simpleminded plotting, and swells of artificial emotionality.

| Mar 21, 2007

Let yourself go and be rewarded by the sight of a hero running home to victory through clouds of fire.

| Jan 26, 2006

The message is: Baseball is purely and simply a matter of divine intervention. At about the 130-minute mark, I got the idea that God's only begotten son was playing right field for the New York team.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 23, 2004

Though entertaining in short stretches, The Natural has no recognizable character of its own.

| May 20, 2003