We understand that people have to sell their films to mass audience, but don’t be fooled by the “up” tone of this new trailer to “Sugar,” the baseball drama directed by excellent “Half Nelson” filmmaking duo Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden.
Having seen the film at least year’s Toronto International Film Festival, we can tell you first hand, it’s a much more slower, studied and observant character piece. Continuing their nuance examination of characters on the margins, “Sugar” is about a baseball hopeful from the Dominican Republic who dreams of making it in the U.S. He’s drafted into the minor leagues, but he quickly finds America to be an alienating place and not quite the mecca he had hoped for.
We’re huge fans of “Half Nelson,” and that film debut signaled amazing promise, but we have to be honest when we say “Sugar” didn’t blow us away. It’s not because we’re not baseball fans either, in fact, those scenes are some of the film’s most thrilling, but the quiet and sympathetic structure of the film was a little underwhelming. We weren’t as engaged as we hoped. But then again, we did have large expectations. Anyhow, the film comes out April 3 in the U.S. so you’ll soon be able to judge for yourself. We will say that it’s admirable that Fleck and Boden are very aware that most 20-somethings are generally engaged in making navel-gazing woe-is-me love stories and at TIFF they pointed out how that specifically doesn’t interest them. Oh the film features TV on the Radio, and a score by Michael Brook (“Into The Wild”).