Cobb (1994) Reviews

• "It's been two years since I got my pecker up in the air."

  utgard142014-05-21

  First things first, this movie is based off of a book written by Al Stump, who is played by Robert Wuhl in the film. Al Stump in recent years has proved to be a liar and a forger so sports historians are calling into question a great deal of his supposed insight into Ty Cobb. In other words, in all likelihood Mr. Stump exaggerated or outright made up most of his allegations against Cobb to sell books. That isn't to say Ty Cobb was a prince of a human being because there's enough contemporary evidence to show that he wasn't. But some of the most vile things that have been said about him can be traced to Stump's writing. So take the things this movie has to say with a huge grain of salt. Another black mark against the film is that it has very little actual baseball in it. This movie doesn't care about Cobb the baseball giant. It only cares about Cobb the asshole. To include one side of the man without the other is a pointless exercise in self-righteousness. Why is a biography of Ty Cobb even necessary without his baseball accomplishments? Because he was a racist and a bully? There are millions of those, past and present, who aren't getting movies made about them. It just defies reason. Cobb was one of the greatest (and dirtiest) baseball players ever. Going by this movie, however, you would think he was just some crotchety old man who shared wacky adventures with a sports reporter. Tommy Lee Jones was too old to play this role, as is especially evident in the flashbacks to when Cobb was younger. He plays Cobb as a silly cantankerous cartoon of a man. Every bit as over the top as his performance of Two Face in Batman Forever. Let that sink in for a minute. Robert Wuhl plays himself as he always does. The movie is entertaining in spots. The comedic parts work better than the dramatic. I can't really recommend it because the bad outweighs the good and, personally, knowing about Stump leaves a bad taste in my mouth over the whole thing.

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• Boring bunch of crude fantasy, nothing worthwhile here

  FlushingCaps2015-06-23

  The movie attempts to present what sort of person baseball great Ty Cobb was, by showing the last several months of his life, focusing on his collaboration with Al Stump, to write Cobb's autobiography, starting in the summer of 1960 and running through the death of Cobb in July 1961. We get a few swirly flashback scenes of some grim moments in Cobb's life, primarily a few looks at the circumstances surrounding the shooting death of his father in 1905. The only baseball footage comes from one "memory" of Cobb's plus what is supposed to have been an old newsreel biography of his playing career that, for reasons unknown, focuses almost solely on scenes that supposedly took place during the 1916 season. So much of the film deals with Stump's life and activities in working with Cobb that the movie would have been more appropriately named "Stump." The portrait of the elderly Cobb is not to be believed. He appears to be a drug-addicted (Painkillers) lunatic who went around with his pistol shooting into the air and at walls whenever he wanted to get someone's attention. According to this film, Cobb was a foul-mouthed man who sounded rather uneducated and a man whom all around feared for their safety. Coming from the fantasy pen of Al Stump, none of this in any way describes the real Ty Cobb, based on the evidence of all the people who did know him in his last years. In other words, anyone seeking to learn anything at all about Ty Cobb should look elsewhere. If you like biography movies because they teach you about how people lived in the old days, this is also a film to be avoided because the total footage that is shown that is supposed to take place before the last year of Cobb's life is less than five minutes. If you want to see how realistic the baseball scenes are—forget it. Not counting the "newsreel" you see one at bat by Cobb, a double, and two stolen bases, each ending with a kick to the crotch with the second followed by a donnybrook. This is not a film about the life of this famous ballplayer, it is a film about several months near the end of his life with almost no time devoted to telling you about all the things he did in his life. Even in that one baseball game that is depicted, we see no interaction between Cobb and his teammates—not even a view of a clubhouse. We see no manager of the Tigers—indeed, we never learn from this film that Cobb managed the Tigers for 6 years. A large part of Cobb's autobiography, the one he hired Stump to help him write, deals with Cobb's ongoing disputes with Tiger owner Frank Navin. There is no mention of Navin in this film. While Babe Ruth was mentioned, there were no scenes showing Cobb and Ruth on the baseball field, or in a hotel room, or playing golf together as they did. Perhaps they couldn't find an actor who looked anything like the Babe. Check that—after all, Tommy Lee Jones doesn't look anything like Ty Cobb and that didn't stop them. What we have is a movie with much more cursing than necessary to set the mood, and for no particular reason, there was even a quasi-sex scene that seemed designed just to convince you even more that Cobb was a nasty old man. We know his family found him hard to get along with, but throughout his life he was polite in public and obliging to autograph seekers and others who visited him, especially if they wanted to talk about baseball. This film doesn't even suggest that he was ever nice to anyone. If you have read other sources and know about the real Cobb, you know this movie is almost 100% concocted by the fantasies of Al Stump. If you knew little about this baseball great and believe anything you saw, you know less about him than you did before. Three times or more they declare that Cobb invented the style of baseball that featured aggressive base running and stealing bases and more, even though that is totally false. With the simple title of "Cobb," any viewer would expect it to be about the man's whole life—or at least a large part of it, perhaps even the parts that made him famous. Another possible title that would have been more accurate is: "Cobb—ten months at the end of his life." As a fictional film this was a dreadfully boring show about a two-bit writer and a nasty old man who seemed like a lunatic. Full of excessive cussing and devoid of any reason to like either character, it would rate a 3 out of 10. But because it claims to portray a very real man and depicts someone far, far different from the real person, complete with a made-up memory scene of how Cobb's father died—one that Ty could not have told Stump because 1) it didn't happen that way at all, and 2) because Ty wasn't there at the time—I find this film rather offensive. So I give it the lowest score allowed here—a one.

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• What a Ballplayer, comedy

  Chukar2003-11-29

  This film is one of my all time favorites. There are some things in the film that I am less than happy about, such as the attempted rape in the hotel room in Reno. I don't believe it actually happened. I have read a few biographical books on Cobb and even though few people ever liked him, there were some things he would not do. Its strange, but many people will see somebody who is detestable, in most respects, and that person is therefore guilty of anything that can be said about him. Ty Cobb was a "son of the south" who never got over his father's murder, and he also never, ever, got over the Civil War. As I recall, he entered the major's in 1904 or 1905. As I said above, the movie "Cobb" is best viewed as a comedy; and I think it was intended to be seen as such by the film makers. I compare it to the film, "A Clockwork Orange." In A Clockwork Orange you had a story of a guy name Alex who had things happen to him, often humorous, because of who he was. At the end of A Clockwork Orange, in the last scene, you have to admit that you could only snicker at what was on Alex's mind listening to his beloved 9th once again, since he had now been "cured." I also remember the scene in the film that you see from the Bible where Jesus is carrying the cross and is being flogged. The camera pans back to the Roman who is doing the whipping, and it is Alex. In Cobb, the first part of the movie is one of the funniest I have ever seen; especially the ride down the hill in the snow to Reno. The film has a lot of truth in it but it actually leaves out a lot. The Scene in which you see Cobb beating up the fan who is crippled is true. But what is not said is that the whole team put itself on the line in backing Cobb in what he did; they went on strike against Cobb's suspension. So, Cobb was not hated quite like he was shown to be in the film, and the film did a discredit to Cobb in some areas. Oh, by the way, that fan that was beatup in the film was Jimmy Buffet from "Lost in Margaritaville" music fame. Jimmy is a good friend of Tommy Lee Jones. Actually, I rather doubt that you could make a real true film about Ty Cobb that could be saleable at the box-office. Ty Cobb was not funny, and he had little sense of humor; he absolutely had no sense of humor about himself. He was a bigot. You did not dare make fun of him to his face. He could explode into a life threatening altercation at the drop of a hat. However, I do believe he was courteous to women for the most part, and that is another area I have problem with what is depicted in the film. Cobb was a Redneck and a great deal like many other Rednecks from the south at that time. In his time there was a great deal of KKK activity going on in the South and the rest of the country for that matter. Cobb reflected his times, and never changed. Also, baseball was a lot different then than it is today. It was a completely different time. Baseball was the ticket for the poor and exploited to get out of the coal mines, the iron mills, or the farm fields. It was much more of a dog eat dog world than it is today. The average player today can move into some other endeavor if he didn't make it. In Cobb's time, it was back to the coal mines and an early death. To quote Ty Cobb: "It's no pink tea, and mollycoddler's had better stay out." Baseball was a do or die affair and there were no holds barred as long as you could get away with it. Cobb, in many ways was not that different than many, but he was the best baseball player of his time, and quite possibly the greatest that ever lived. And, he played baseball with a fury that nobody else, before or since, has played with. Unfortunately, he could not turn off that fury when he wasn't playing the game. For Ty Cobb, baseball was absolute war and he devoted himself 100-percent to playing it that way and he also devoted his mental capacities 100-percent to the study of getting the edge on his opponents. He would do or say anything to get you out of your game. Cobb could also circle the bases faster than anyone who has ever played the game, with his spikes sharpened. He was rather big for his time and was about the same height as Babe Ruth. Couple that size with that speed and the grit in his demeanor and nobody ever enjoyed or looked forward to playing against him. "What a ballplayer."

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• A great story despite being a lot darker than most sports biographies

  bob the moo2004-02-07

  When sportswriter Al Stump is contracted to write the autobiography of baseball player Ty Cobb, he believes he has it made. Cobb had a reputation as a mean player who is cruel, bigoted and monstrous. Al quickly learns that this reputation was well earned and that Cobb is all the things that he is reputed to be. As the pair set off to Reno in a middle of a snowstorm, Cobb tells him the story of his life, although the bitter, angry mess that is Cobb tells him all he needs to know about the past. When I sat to watch this film, I was aware that it was meant to be pretty harsh in terms of how it portrayed Cobb, but I didn't realise just how little of his career this film would touch upon. The film never shirks from showing Cobb to be the monstrous man he was claimed to be - either in his cruel career where he would sharpen his studs to hurt opponents or his personal life where he destroyed his family. Despite this the first half (and much of the film) is a fairly lively, almost comic affair that is deceptively enjoyable to watch. What this overall tone succeeds in doing is making the rest of the film that much more shocking and powerful as a result. The first significant turn is where Cobb gets `laid' in Reno - a moment that turns quickly from sensitive and comic to violent and scary and then almost immediately to the tragic. This film missed out on a full cinematic release due to harsh reviews, but I really don't understand why it got them. The only thing I can think of is that the reviewers felt this was an unfair portrayal of Cobb; I do not know anything about him, nor do I care about baseball as a sport so maybe I am being conned by this film but it is certainly a very interesting character who is looked at as part of an interesting and imaginative film. The film doesn't look very much at Ty's career but instead focuses on the man - this is much more interesting and it is done through straightforward means as well as more imaginative touches such as the extension of the career newsreel to Ty's low points. The film really works well, but I cannot imagine it being as good were it not for the fiery performance from Jones. I don't know how close it is to the real Cobb, but for the material he gets it just right. He balances the character on a knife-edge to the point that nobody could really feel sorry for him but at the same time it is difficult to hate him. Support from Wuhl is OK but not really as good - he wisely stands in the shadow of Jones. The support cast do well, with a small but important performance from Davidovich. Overall, this is much darker than I expected from a baseball film from Shelton; however it is better for it. I cannot comment on how fair it is to the real Cobb, but regardless of this it is a really enjoyable character piece with a great central performance. It keeps the audience by swinging wildly between the comic, the dark and the tragic, keeping us with it all the time. It is a dark drama but still enjoyable and sadly great underrated and underseen.

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• Tommy Lee Jones at his Best

  michaelf1999-03-05

  This little seen film has Tommy Lee Jones giving one of the best performances of his career. It is a shame that the film was given only a limited release with no advertising budget. I know of many who wanted to see this movie, but it was in and out of the theaters before they could notice. "Cobb" gets one of my highest recommendations. No Jones fan can justify not seeing this movie.

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