Even though I found many faults, I still gave this movie an 8. I am fond of inspirational sports movies. The problem with this one is that it needed to be one of those HBO 3 part series, or a season series, like "The Bronx is burning", or something. One minute, this outcast/rebel from Chicago (Mitch)shows up, smoking, asking for weed, stealing his grandpas truck, not getting along with the grandparents, the next min. he is a liked baseball player, pal-ing around with grandpops. They needed to either get more into his character, or just cut it out of the story. They did this with a few characters. One min. Powers Booth's character is fighting in the town hall for his team, and school, the next, he is coaching a different school. Rachel Cooks character. She is all about getting rid of this school, 2 mins later, she wants it to stay. It makes you feel that no one in this town sticks to their convictions. They really needed to show more about each character. Great story though. I had never heard of this movie, and was flicking through channels, and happen to catch the beginning. To me, it was just another boring baseball story, until halfway through, I noticed that it was a true story, and that is what made it much better for me.

Baseball is the perfect metaphor the American Dream: effort = success, anyone can play, and winning is a metaphor for life.

The Last Season is a nice effort by Sean Astin. It is pretty much exactly what a good sports underdog movie should be.

The film about Norway, based on fact, a tiny town of 500 or so that produced team after team that went onto win the State Championship for High School baseball. When threatened with politics and closure due to lack of funding the team does what it knows best, goes in to bat for one last season.

Have to be honest though and say it's not as inspiring as it would like to be in places, it does hit some good home runs by the end, but overall it is a little too clichéd to really succeed.

If sports movies are your thing then you'll enjoy it, but I don't think this will become anyone's (Outside of Iowa) favorite ever movie.

It is a nice effort, and watchable, but as I said it ain't outstanding...

Until I saw this movie, I thought inspirational sports movies were easy to make, but this movie made it seem otherwise. I was expecting more from a movie with such a good cast, but even they couldn't save this movie from destruction.

The main thing that ruined the movie was the screenplay. The story itself was inspirational but the sequence of events and the actual writing took that story and chopped it up into pieces. It almost seemed as though the writer had gone around to the people involved in the actual story and written down exactly what they said presented as a screenplay, not bothering to smooth and connect events.

Attempting to include everyone in the story, the character development was also lacking. One minute Mitch(Michael Angarano) was the mean outcast, and the next he was a mannerly star on the baseball team. It was too short of a period in the movie for the change to be believable.

Worse than the screenplay and bad character development was the score. Not one moment was the movie devoid of cheesy "inspirational" music. It is okay to use at the climax or a dramatic moment in the movie, but when it is played throughout the movie relentlessly, it loses its impact. It made the movie a joke. The movie would have been better off with no music at all. It ruined any and all touching scenes.

The only reason I give this movie a 6/10 is because through all of the mistakes, there was a fire lit in the viewer that wanted to fight for this small town team and see them succeed.