Without focusing on just one team, career, or fateful game, Bull Durham avoids every sports movie cliche—using Minor League baseball as a way into the complicated relationships between a rookie, a veteran, and a longtime fan. By stripping away our expectations of there needing to be a winner and a loser, writer-director Ron Shelton allows these characters to blossom in their own unique ways, allowing us to observe how each of them views life from their stubborn, little boxes. Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon are sex appeal personified, while never smoothing over the thorniest parts of their characters. And Tim Robbins takes what could have been a two-dimensional caricature and gives him real depth.
"Costner is a natural as the dyed-in-the-wool ballplayer. His best lines are when he's philosophizing, like on being an All-American male who hates anything by Susan Sontag."
— Variety Staff
Veteran catcher Crash Davis is brought to the minor league Durham Bulls to help their up and coming pitching prospect, "Nuke" Laloosh. Their relationship gets off to a rocky start and is further complicated when baseball groupie Annie Savoy sets her sights on the two men.
Oscars
1 nomination
Golden Globes
2 nominations
WGA
1 win
NYFCC
1 win, 1 nomination
LAFCA
1 win
