'Match' makes its way to the screen

In Match -- a film based on a play -- you'll find meager attempts to disguise the fact that the material is better suited to the stage. Despite a few stabs at opening the drama, Match remains far too theatrical to work as a movie. Taking over the part Frank Langella played on stage, Patrick Stewart portrays Tobi Powell, a famous ballet dancer who -- after an injury -- has become a fabled instructor at Juilliard. Tobi's life is shaken when he's visited by a couple (Carla Gugino and Matthew Lillard) who purport to be doing research on dance history. Written and directed by Stephen Belber, who adapted his own play, the movie's multiple hidden agendas and twists never feel entirely credible. Stewart makes the most of a showcase role, and Gugino and Lillard do their part, but absent the spark of live performance, Match seldom bursts into convincing life.

Eastwood scouts for another hit

Trouble With the Curve is low on surprises, but still offers some satisfaction.

Predictable, a little corny and featuring a familiar performance from Clint Eastwood as a crotchety old baseball scout whose bosses think he may have lost something off his fast ball, Trouble With the Curve can be pleasing in the way of formula movies that pretty much work.

Eastwood portrays Gus, a legendary scout for the Atlanta Braves. Gus has two problems: a statistic-addicted younger man in the organization (Matthew Lillard) doesn't trust his judgment and he's losing his eyesight. Disabilities or no, Gus is stubborn, and he does have one loyal supporter in the Braves organization (John Goodman).

Gus's baseball future seems to hinge on his evaluation of Bo Gentry (Joe Massingill), a high school slugging prospect the Braves are eager to sign.

Randy Brown's screenplay contrives to have Bo's daughter (Amy Adams) join him in North Carolina to help scout Bo. She'll be Gus's eyes. Of course, Gus doesn't want help, and Adams's Mickey (she was named after Mickey Mantle) has problems of her own. On the verge of earning a hard-won partnership, she has to leave her Atlanta-based law firm for a few days to assist Gus.

Eastwood can play a character like Gus in his sleep, but his performance is by no means lazy. He gives the role its due, creating a hard-boiled type who has trouble coming to terms with any sign of vulnerability.

My respect for Adams continues to grow. Watch her in The Master and look at her here. You'll be hard-pressed to tell it's the same actress. I'm not talking about the way she looks, but the way she acts. Her character in The Master has a spine of steel; here she's playing a strong woman, but one who has to hold up her end of a romantic tale.

While helping her father, Mickey meets a young scout (Justin Timberlake) who takes an immediate interest in her.

The story pits Gus's instincts and experience against the statisticians, and you don't need a score card to know who's going to win that battle. This is, after all, a Clint Eastwood movie, and it's unlikely that he's going to suffer an irreparable defeat.

This time out, Eastwood cedes directing chores to Robert Lorenz, who has worked as a second-unit director and producer on a variety of Eastwood productions. Aside from creating a blurry spot in the middle of images that are supposed to represent Gus's fading eyesight, Lorenz does a straightforward job with material that's fairly straightforward.

To the extent that there's subtext, it goes like this: Mickey's an adult, but she and the long-widowed Gus still have issues, which the screenplay doesn't deal with until the end and which hardly qualify as dramatic dynamite.

Trouble with the Curve wraps things up so neatly, it's a bit like watching a player who never gets his uniform dirty. This one's for moviegoers who long for happy endings and who are inclined toward what's commonly known as old-fashioned entertainment.

I'm not always one of those people, but saw no reason to fault a movie that wants to tell its story, maybe moisten a few eyes and move on.

Clooney loses his cool in Hawaii

Early in The Descendants - the latest movie from director Alexander Payne - we're warned against being seduced by Hawaii's abundant charms. The movie's narrator - an increasingly troubled father played by George Clooney - cautions us not to be deceived by the scenery: People in Hawaii suffer as much as everyone else.

Clooney's character speaks from experience:

During the course of this deceptively relaxed and engaging movie, Clooney's Matt King grapples with death, betrayal, parental angst and personal responsibility. In other words, "The Descendants" is a full-blooded movie, not a travelogue.

But before you reach for your handkerchief or begin wringing your hands in grief, know that the tone of The Descendants is far from lugubrious. Payne manages the kind of neat trick that defines some of Hollywood's best work: The Descendants can be generously entertaining without scraping all the emotional meat of its bones.

Let's get the movie's bona fides out of the way: Yes, The Descendants likely will show up on Oscar's short list for best picture. Yes, Clooney probably will find himself among the nominees for best actor. Payne probably will win a best director nomination, as well as a nomination (along with his co-writers) for best-adapted screenplay. (Kaui Hart Hemmings wrote the novel on which the movie is based.)

There could be more Oscar nominations on tap for The Descendants, but you get the idea: The Descendants has been positioned to make a major splash as one of the year's best big-screen endeavors, and - before we proceed - let me assure you that I'm not going to pull a 180 and tell you to forget all the hype and pre-opening accolades. Some of them are well deserved.

Clooney plays Matt King, a successful real-estate lawyer who hasn't paid a great deal of attention to his wife or to his 17- and 10-year-old daughters. Of course, life is about to teach Matt a major lesson.

The trigger: Matt's wife is involved in a boating accident that puts her into a coma from which she has no chance of recovering. Not surprisingly, Matt's world turns upside down - both as a parent and as a husband. Matt also begins to discover that he may have had an entirely mistaken notion about the kind of life he'd been living.

The movie's trailer reveals way too much, but I won't say more about a screenplay in which Matt accumulates disasters large and small, even as we ignore his early-picture warning and are lulled into something like a state of Hawaiian ease.

Matt's woes extend beyond worry about his wife's medical condition. He's also the trustee for a magnificent parcel of his family's land in Kauai, unspoiled acreage that most of the relatives want to sell to a developer. They think they're doing the right thing because they favor a local developer over an outsider.

Thankfully, the heart of the story belongs to Clooney and to the actresses who play his daughters (Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller). Woodley, from TV's The Secret Life of the American Teenager, portrays a spiky, 17-year-old student. She's difficult, and, perhaps as part of that difficulty, insists that her boyfriend (Nick Krause) accompany her everywhere. Krause's Sid seems like a major dope - until he doesn't.

Despite the problems she presents, Matt increasingly relies on his older daughter. Woodely gives a complex, layered performance. She's playing a character who's not fully mature, but she's not a child, either. She's in that most awkward of categories: an almost adult.

Matthew Lillard and Judy Greer find themselves in major supporting roles, with Greer perhaps having the better showcase, particularly in a scene near the movie's end. Robert Forster makes a strong impression as Matt's embittered father-in-law.

A word or two about Clooney: Clooney is a first-rank star, and he can't check his stardom at the door when the cameras roll. But Clooney deserves major credit for putting aside some of his trademark cool. He's playing an emotionally rumpled guy who can be clueless, a man defined by what he doesn't know.

The Descendants might be a shade too easy, considering some of the issues it raises, and like many good movies, it may be receiving more praise than it deserves. If so, it's because Payne's movie soars above most mainstream entertainment, offering us something welcome and rare: movie characters behaving in ways that are touching, funny and sometimes even smart.