Bull Durham: Difference between revisions

 

* [[All Men Are Perverts]]

* [[All Women Are Lustful]]: Annie and Millie, although Annie tempers hers with roleplay.

* [[The Art of Bra Removal|The Art of Gartered Stocking Removal]]: Nuke has as much trouble with Annie's garters as most men do in the standard version of the trope.

* [[Big Game]]: Subverted. In a baseball season even in the minors, there's no one big game outside of the playoffs, and the movie ends well before the season does.

* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: The movie [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|ends on a rain-out]] and Annie returns to her home to find Crash having played his last game, hitting his record-setting home run for another team. Crash reveals he's quitting as a player, while Annie reveals that she's quitting too (just boys, not her love of baseball). {{spoiler|Crash then reveals he might get a coaching job in California, suggesting that managing is his ticket to The Show.}}

* [[Book Ends]]: "La Vie En Rose" plays while Annie has Nuke tied up in bed and reads poetry to him towards the beginning of the film, and it plays when she says goodbye to him towards the end. (But neither scene opens or begins the ''entire'' film).

* [[Brick Joke]]: At one point, Crash teaches Nuke all the cliches he's going to have to tell reporters when he gets to the majors ("We gotta play it one day at a time"). At the end, when Nuke is in the majors, and speaking to a reporter, he's using them all.

* [[The Cameo]]: some of the background characters were real-life persons involved with the Durham Bulls organization when the film was made.

* [[Captain Obvious]]

'''Annie''': Yes. I do. }}

* [[Catch Phrase]]: To this day, minor league pitchers want to "announce my presence with authority!"

* [[Cluster F-Bomb]]: Half the dialog is spiked with profanity. If you ever watch ''Bull Durham'' on a basic cable channel, you're missing probably thirty percent of the movie.

** There's also the [[Precision F-Strike]] for when the F-word helps make a point:

** There's apparently one word {{spoiler|"cocksucker"}} you're never supposed to say to an umpire.

'''Annie''' (sighs): How romantic. }}

* [[Deconstruction]]: Before this, sports movies had clean-cut heroes, outright villains, and every problem resolved by a [[Big Game]] that saves the day. This movie dumps ''all of that'' for serious character development and introspection, and that winning the game is unimportant compared to coming to terms with who you are. By playing by none of the rules, ''Bull Durham'' is considered one of the best sports movies '''ever'''.

* [[Fourth Date Marriage]]: Millie, Annie's friend and fellow groupie, has basically slept with half the Carolina League right up until she tries hooking up with the overtly religious Jimmy. After just one night, the two of them get engaged.

* [[Glory Days]]: Crash once spent 21 days in the major leagues (what he calls "The Show".) He's spent the rest of his minor league career ''hoping and praying'' to earn his way back ever since.

** In a non-sports way, Annie. She keeps wanting to relive the magic of seducing and mentoring a hotshot ball player every year... but even she realizes she's getting too old for that now...

* [[Good People Have Good Sex]]

* [["Not Wearing Pants" Dream]]: Annie tries to get Nuke to focus his energies elsewhere by insisting he wears a woman's garter belt. He has a horrifying nightmare of being on the mound wearing ''just'' the garter belt (and a jock strap), and refuses to. When he finally relents, Crash is the one who spots him trying it on... and doesn't mock Nuke for wearing it. He even tells him "Rose goes in front, big guy."

** Oh, Crash mocked him, all right-- he was just snarky about it. Slapping him on the ass and saying, "That's ''really'' hot."

* [[The Obi-Wan]]: Crash. The rookie players flock to his leadership and wisdom real quick, except for Nuke, who eventually comes around when Annie insists on him following Crash's advice... and it actually improves his game.

** Annie's insistence on Nuke following Crash's advice comes back to bite her on the ass when Nuke's re-channels his sexual energy into his pitching, which helps him go on a fantastic winning streak. Annie, [[Catch Phrase|being monogamous in the framework of the baseball season]], starts getting ''very'' sexually frustrated... even though [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|she's the one who suggested]] the re-channeling before the streak. But when Nuke admits to Crash that he's thinking about having sex with her just to get her out of his hair, Crash basically says, "Are you crazy? Never ''fuck'' with a winning streak." So Nuke stays out of Annie's bed, and when Nuke tells her why, [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge|she gets pissed off at Crash]].

** "Don't ''fuck'' with a winning streak."

** Straight-arrow Christian Jimmy gets what counts, for ''him,'' as a precision F-strike when he sees the "special wedding cake" the boys get him:

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