‘Dreams’ Made for Nightmare on Oscar Night

The Oscars wimped out again, settling for “Miss Daisy” when they could have climbed with “My Left Foot,” but I suppose we should be thankful for small favors.

“Field of Dreams” didn’t win.

When I first saw this year’s five nominees for Best Picture, it was a little like looking at one of those drawings of a trumpet, a trombone, a tuba and a ham sandwich, with the caption: What’s Wrong With This Picture?

“Field of Dreams” never belonged--especially when Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” is shamefully left on the bench--but the combination of Kevin Costner, corn fields and Old Horsehide is an obviously toxic mix that should never be sampled without a physician’s approval.

Too many brain cells in too many theaters gave their lives over this one.

People I know, people I like, people of normally sound thought and clear vision staggered out of “Field of Dreams” swooning and rhapsodizing, as if they’d just been touched by the hand of Abner Doubleday.

“So how was Costner?”

“Ahhh, a young Jimmy Stewart.”

“And James Earl Jones?”

“A tour de force.”

“So, you recommend this movie?”

“It’s only the ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ of the ‘80s!”

Well, I’m not a big fan of baseball movies--too much slow motion and too many home runs in the bottom of the ninth--but I do like Jimmy Stewart, James Earl Jones and “It’s a Wonderful Life.” So I plunked down my seven bucks--I saw it in New York--and proceeded to squirm and cringe for the next two hours.

The characters were as cardboard as bubble-gum cards. Let’s see, we have The Wide-Eyed Dreamer, The Understanding Wife, The Burned-Out Genius, The Evil Business Partner. Did we miss anybody?

The basic premise--that building a magical baseball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield will bring Shoeless Joe Jackson and other dead folks back to life--is a major reach to begin with. Bogged down with dopey dialogue and Costner’s awe-filled acting (“Wow, that’s cool!”), it never had a chance of getting off the ground.

And that mysterious voice: If you build it, he will come. OK, OK, we get the idea. But Costner doesn’t, so we get to hear it over and over and over.

If you build it, he will come.

If you repeat it, I am gone.

The worst moment, though, is saved till the end, for Jones, when he launches into his gooey ode to The Game and how baseball stands for what was good in America, back in the days of Shoeless Joe’s Black Sox scandal, and what can be good again.

By my count, baseball in the last 12 months has stood for illicit gambling (Pete Rose), adultery (Wade Boggs), lechery (Steve Garvey), substance abuse (Darryl Strawberry) and greed (the lockout). If that’s good for America, maybe it’s time to switch to soccer.

Unlike the Academy, not every movie critic bought into The Field of Corn. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called it one of the worst 10 films of 1989. That’s a tad harsh; Stallone made a few movies last year, didn’t he? “Field of Dreams” is nothing more than a mild, if melodramatic, diversion. Not meltdown material, but not Oscar material, either.

For a while, though, it was nervous time. There’d been a lockout, a long one, and a lot of Academy voters are baseball fans. Would “Field” become looked upon as an oasis?

And it had been eight years since a sports movie won Best Picture. And that was “Chariots of Fire,” which was about Olympic runners in Great Britain, where they don’t even play baseball. Before that, there was “Rocky,” which was about Balboa, not Colavito.

The time to honor a baseball film just might be right . . .

But, this time, they just didn’t have the right baseball film.

In that sub-division, “Field of Dreams” ranks around the middle of the pack--better, certainly, than the uproariously unfunny “Major League,” but miles behind “Bull Durham,” which also starred Costner, who should have known better than to try it twice. It’s a time-worn unwritten rule of cinema: One good baseball movie per acting career.

Then there’s the best baseball film of them all, “Eight Men Out.” That movie had everything--John Sayles directing, subtle acting performances, dialogue that didn’t insult your intelligence and, best of all, a sportswriter as one of its heroes.

Clearly another case of art imitating life.