Kernel Rating (out of 5): 
MPAA Rating: PG-13 Length: 111 minutes
Age Appropriate for: 13+. Some cursing; some sexual references and an implied romantic relationship between two characters; cigarette-smoking and some scenes in bars and honky-tonk Southern locations; and some tough thematic material, like an estrangement between a father and a daughter and dealing with the death of a parent.
Clint Eastwood does his gruff and grumbly thing in ‘Trouble with the Curve,’ a movie about the old-school elements of basketball scouting and recruiting. Robert Lorenz’s first directorial effort is sentimental and emotional enough, but it’s disappointing that you can see all its moves coming a mile away.
By Roxana Hadadi
Even before Clint Eastwood berated that chair at the Republican National Convention, we all knew what the man was about: old-school values, delivered in a brusque, no-nonsense manner that prides hard work, genuineness, and honesty above all others. Whether you agree with his political values is one thing, but Eastwood doesn’t surprise us anymore, especially because he consistently plays that unapproachable old dude who secretly is emotionally fragile. “Trouble with the Curve” has him in an identical role, and while the family drama-set-on-a-baseball-diamond is done well, it’s the same old, same old.
