You Gotta Believe

This family-friendly baseball flick leans into the hokum, starring Luke Wilson and Greg Kinnear in a based-on-true story of a Little League playing for their dying coach.

I’m not sure where the word “corny” got its start, perhaps with the staple crop that’s always satisfying but rarely surprising. It’s usually been used by people who consider themselves sophisticated to make fun of those content with the simpler things in life.

“You Gotta Believe” is the very epitome of corny, starting with that title completely unadorned with nuance or obfuscation. This is a baseball movie, made for families, and wears its unironic intentions with pride.

It’s the based-on-true story of the Westside Little League Team from Texas, which in 2002 made an unlikely run to the World Series tournament. What made it notable was that A) they were the worst team in their local league, and B) one of their two primary coaches was dying of cancer, so they dedicated their run to him.

Yes, it’s not very original stuff. You could practically employ this movie as a sports movie blueprint in a screenwriting class, from unlikely rise to slowly turning it around to initial success to devastating setback to return to final glory.

Yes, it leans into the hokum. It’s practically a snapshot of heartland America values, where taciturn men work and women stay at home with the kids and boys play baseball. Old-school values are practiced and boys are allowed to be boys.

And yes, it just works. Even as I occasionally rolled my eyes at the foreordained moments of the “big game” or shook my head at some of the juvenile humor, I recognized this as wholesome, earnest entertainment quite literally made for the whole family.

You may scoff, but I bet you’ll feel a warm flush or two creeping up your chest.

Luke Wilson and Greg Kinnear play Bobby Ratliff and Jon Kelly, two best friends since childhood who settled down to raise families and coach the local baseball team, on which both their sons play — Robert (Michael Cash) and Walker (Etienne Kellici) repetitively.

Bobby’s wife, Patti (Sarah Gadon), and Jon’s wife, Kathy (Molly Parker), are dutifully supportive and maternal, though independent enough to push their men when they feel like they need a nudge.

As the story begins the season is just wrapping up, another loss for Westside. Jon is the manager who’s been phoning it in, spending his time in the dugout going over papers for his hectic job as a lawyer. Bobby provides the stable, encouraging voice. The kids go through the motions, because in Texas baseball is just what you do in the summers.

The head of the league, Kliff (Patrick Renna of “The Sandlot” fame), recruits Jon to enter his team in the World Series competition for the cynical reason they have to send a squad or risk losing their sponsorships for next season.

They decline at first, but then Bobby passes out while playing catch with Bobby and his younger son, Peanut, and we get some standard-issue scenes in the hospital where the doctor has very bad things to relate, followed by chemotherapy and under-eye makeup to make Wilson seem thin and wan.

It’s also a moment for Jon, who realizes he’s been overlooking the important things, and decides to take the team to tournament to buck up his friend. The boys quickly sign on, after a little prevarication about what exactly is wrong with Bobby, and then we’re off to the races.

“You Gotta Believe” has quite a bit of baseball action, and it’s generally pretty well done, with quick cutaway edits right after a pitch is thrown or before it’s hit to make it seem like things are moving faster than they really are. At several points they use GoPro-style camera tricks to make it seem like we’re following the path of a baseball or a runner whizzing between bases.

Screenwriter Lane Garrison and director Ty Roberts go back a ways, having previously partnered on a similarly inspiring youth sports movie, “12 Mighty Orphans,” and Garrison playing the lead role in “The Iron Orchard,” which Roberts directed. They’ve got a good feel for this material, with an underlying theme of bringing a team together as a parable about the importance of connection and community.

The interactions between the boys are authentic, at least if you’ve ever been or been around a bunch of 12-year-olds. It’s basically a non-stop run of put-downs and gross jokes, occasionally peppered with some snarky allusions to girls.

Other than Walker and Robert, the rest of the team fall into a sort of Greek chorus with a few standouts. Nicholas Fry plays Scooter, the smallish, bespectacled catcher with a mouthful of baseball aphorisms. He has an older sister, Caroline, who is the object of attention for some of his teammates, especially Mark (Scott MacKenzie), the resident wannabe playboy.

Gavin MacIver-Wright plays Mitch Belew, the red-headed wiseacre; late in the game his dad, bearing the same name and played by Lew Temple, will join the team as their taskmaster and a fill-in for Bobby while he’s getting chemotherapy and such.

Of course, their opponents are all more accomplished and seemingly much older — a nod to the scandals that have plagued the Little League with faked birth certificates — and I guffawed at the scene where Scooter assesses the various facial hair of their upcoming adversary. One even features a girl pitcher, which proves to be pretty-boy Mark’s undoing.

Things build up to the big game, as they must, though the outcome may not be exactly the victory we were expecting.

“You Gotta Believe” is a mix of breezy popcorn entertainment and some life-lessons seriousness, with Kinnear and Wilson ably shouldering most of the latter. I can understand why actors of their heft deigned to play in a low-budget affair like this, which was released into theaters a couple of Fridays ago with very little publicity.

It’s a solid single of a movie, more than a bunt but well short of a big fly.