Al Percolo (Albert Brooks) is a scout for the Yankees. He bends the rules and lies to get the latest phenomena Tommy Lacy (Michael Rapaport). However Lacy turns out to be a complete flop and runs away. Al is punished to scout deep in Mexico. He stumbles across Steve Nebraska (Brendan Fraser). Yankee boss Ron Wilson (Lane Smith) fires him. He decides to bring Steve back to the States himself. The Yankees bids $55M for him to pitch but they need a psychiatrist's letter. Al picks Dr. Aaron (Dianne Wiest) out of the phone book.Albert Brooks is annoyingly sleazy. He's really off-putting and has none of the likability of 'Broadcast News'. The movie doesn't actually need to show all the ugliness. It needs to get to Brendan Fraser much earlier. The first part is not as funny as the filmmaker thinks it is. Director Michael Ritchie made one of my favorite comedy 'The Bad News Bears', but his resume is inconsistent. If this has any hope for this movie, it's the chemistry between Brooks and Fraser but it's not funny enough. The baseball stuff is ridiculous. Brooks is like fingernails on the chalkboard. It's simply not good no matter how crazy Fraser acts.

Albert Brooks co-wrote and stars in this sometimes-bright but terribly unsubtle comedy about a talent scout for the New York Yankees who loses his reputation after getting a skittish college Freshman signed to the team (the Yankees apparently scheduled the kid to pitch in a televised game without any training or pre-game publicity whatsoever, so don't they get what they deserve?); Brooks is banished to South Central Mexico to find talent, and yet when he comes up with another promising pitcher, he's fired over the telephone (in one of those excruciating sitcom developments the movie occasionally falls prey to). The new pitcher (Brendan Fraser, still in "Encino Man" mode) is a child in a young man's body, thereby linking the scout and the player on an emotionally-needy basis (not solid ground for laugh-out-loud comedy). Brooks as an actor is very ingratiating--he always has been--but this material, despite some very amusing one-liners, is stale, highly concocted, and immature. Many real-life sports luminaries appear in cameos...perhaps they should have been allowed to strengthen the script. ** from ****

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the movie. I've probably seen it about 10 times, and it never fails to entertain me and give me some good laughs here and there. It's your typical goofy Brendan Frasier comedy, although something tells me that's not what exactly what it was going for. I didn't buy into any of the dramatic elements of the movie... Brendan Frasier's character(his goofy behavior), as well as some of the plot elements made it very hard for me to take the movie completely seriously. The fact that Steve Nebraska (Frasier) was supposedly the "greatest player to ever live" and his ability to strike every batter out with 100+ MPH fastballs and even the ability to hit a home run every time at bat seemed a little ridiculous to me. Also, the conflict that arose towards the middle of the movie (about Nebraska's mysterious past/his family) should have been delved into a little more. But Other than those complaints, I'll say that I enjoyed The Scout for what it was, which was an above average baseball comedy with enough laughs and plenty of entertainment to keep me watching for 2 hours.

This movie starts out great, especially the scenes with Brendan in Mexico, but turns for the worse once his personality is fully revealed. A bizarre film that is a drama bookended by comedy. Wiest does her part very well, and "The Boss" is his jerk self. Not enough baseball scenes. It's a like a sports-themed "The Cable Guy", in that it's supposed to be funny, but Fraser is downright psychotic in some scenes. It of course wraps it up too quickly in the end. A dream World Series matchup though; Yankees-Cardinals.4/10