SummaryAn unknown comes out of seemingly nowhere to become a legendary player with almost divine talent.
Directed By:Barry Levinson
Written By:Bernard Malamud, Roger Towne, Phil Dusenberry
The Natural
Metascore
Generally Favorable
61
User score
Generally Favorable
7.4
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Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
53% Positive
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
47% Mixed
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
100
The Natural is a fairy tale from start to finish, full of wildly implausible scenes that win over our emotions because, frankly, that's the way we'd like life to be. Being a baseball fan involves repeatedly experiencing exquisite pain and exquisite joy. Well, there's a lot of both in The Natural.
80
Let yourself go and be rewarded by the sight of a hero running home to victory through clouds of fire.
User score
Generally Favorable
70% Positive
19 Ratings
19 Ratings
19% Mixed
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
11% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
Dec 7, 2017
10
The Natural is my favourite baseball movie. The actors give fantastic performances, there are clever twists and Robert Redford gives one of his best renditions ever as Roy Hobbs.
Sep 20, 2025
8
"The Natural" is a baseball movie that shows Redford divine talent. Thank you to AMC for releasing this into theaters after this legend passed.
75
The Natural is dense with Boys' Life stories and grand heroics, and it sometimes wanders from black comedy to serious icon-bashing and back again. But mostly it's good fun. At the end, everyone in the audience is swinging imaginary bats. It's a great movie for summer. [11 May 1984, p.D1]
70
Levinson doesn’t seem to care about redemption, guilt, or any of that other nonsense. He wants to make “the great American baseball hero movie.” He wants to say something about old neighborhoods and fathers and sons playing catch in the late summer evening. The cinematography is lush, the Randy Newman score is epic. The period detail and baseball scenes are top notch.
60
An otherwise fine sports fantasy is dragged down by an overindulgence in sentimentality.
50
Mr. Levinson, who both wrote and directed Diner, the small, exquisitely realized comedy about growing up aimless in Baltimore, here seems to be at the service of other people's decisions. Though entertaining in short stretches, The Natural has no recognizable character of its own.
40
A moment or two between Richard Farnsworth and Wilford Brimley recall the verbal skills of Levinson's Diner; the rest of the film is bloatedly “visual”: blinding backlighting, grandiose slow motion, overstudied montage.
Mar 20, 2019
6
Character - 1. Game - 0. The Natural Levinson's game is played on familiar ground and cliched rules, but above all, it is fair. And that is his self-created window where he gets in from. This unusual journey of a young athlete- or so it seems when it starts up- is authentic and practical. The double edge sword where his method is productive and necessary but not cinematic makes you go back and forth on where you lie in the final scorecard. All the stages and characters that Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) encounters is executed brilliantly by the director Barry Levinson. But mind you, this journey is not gripping all the time. Roger and Phil; the screenwriters, who adapted it from Bernard's novel could have been edited better and made it more thrilling for the viewers. There are very few such moments in the game where we get what we have been craving for. "I am here to play the game" claims Redford and it is a soothing medicine that makes up for all the sweat and blood we go through, which even his first swing or throw could never replace. On terms of performance, Redford is supported magnanimously by Glenn Close whose both character and performance is a sight to behold. This never flinching attitude of Redford can only be **** by Close's generous watery eyes. Other supporting cast like Robert Duvall and Wilford Brimley are definitely on track although Kim Basinger seems awfully distracted in her cloak of being an enchantress. The film fumbles right before its last act that turns out to be the major disappointment of all, it slows down more than it already was. The Natural is the apt description of the film, what's good about it comes from within, for it clearly isn't going to work harder, a typical sport genre feature.
