Addendum

One thing I've noticed about documentaries is the nervous camera syndrome. Most documentaries are boring because it never occurred to documentary makers to do fancy effects that you would see in fictional offerings. Tarnation, the film by Jonathan Cauoette, does a ton of image manipulation. Admittedly, it's trying to go for a state of mind, but too much replay of old video can be dull, and I suspect that's why they do it.

Similarly, in The Arisocrats, you can tell there are at least two cameras on any one person, and they often cut back and forth, or offer up a mirror image, just to keep the cuts going quickly. I tell you, it's annoying.

I thought of one other bothersome aspect of Take Me Out. One key theme is that no one's life is perfect. Darren is a superstar, who says he is godlike. Yet, he has the wrong kind of personality for this. Most superstars are either egomaniacs, like Terrell Owens, and therefore somewhat unbearable. Darren merely says he's godlike, but doesn't really have the bravado or swagger to back up such claims.

He also has very little to say about how one should play baseball. Some folks, like the now decapitated Ted Williams, treated hitting as a kind of informal science. The play really suffers from more telling than showing, far too much of it. Yet, the players (those that have half a personality) seem likeable enough, and that surprisingly, can carry it.

Oddly enough, by not being that realistic about baseball, it may last a lot longer, because fewer things will date it.

It's weird because you can poke holes left and right, yet the production values, the acting, are all pretty good. It gives hope that there's a better play out there that can treat this issue with the depth it deserves.