It is always good when your endless scrolling through streaming services pays off.  It can be difficult.  The process involves passing up many titles which I think might be relevant, but about which I have zero interest.  That is okay, too, if they do not draw my attention.  The job of a critic, self-styled or not, is to simply observe and comment.  What we observe will not always be something we love, but it is a blessing to be able to do such a job.  Further, because I am Catholic and do not wish to be critical (there is a difference!), I try to go for titles that I think will have some merit.  None of this is guaranteed, especially when you are dealing with a relatively obscure movie like Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game (2022).  Yet, as the film underscores, sometimes you have to take a chance.  Not everything you choose will be great, but sometimes you will find that hidden gem that makes the rest of the slop worth it.

Whatever it is that Roger Sharpe (Dennis Boutsikaris) did with his life, it seems to have been worth it since they made Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game about him.  He also narrates it, focusing on his college years (Mike Faist) and the time following when he becomes a writer Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ) magazine, occasionally making cameos in a scene to further explain it.  It is while he is at the University of Wisconsin that he is first introduced to pinball.  With his scholastic and social struggles, it offers him an escape and a sense of control, the last of these being important to his character.  Following graduation, he is married and moved to New York to pursue his writing career, at first in advertising.  However, that ends as quickly as it begins, and within seemingly minutes of being in the Big Apple he is signing divorce papers.  The unhappiness continues as he gets a tiny apartment on his own and begins looking for employment.  His one solace is pinball, but there is a catch.  The game is banned in the city, the result of Mayor Fiorella La Guardia’s (Carlos Lopez) efforts to fight organized crime and curb corruption.  Such an idea sounds as strange to Roger in the 1970s as it does today.  As such, he is forced to play the game he loves, one that helps him think, in an adult bookstore.  That is right.  While the municipal code allows for pornography to be awash on the streets, you cannot use your quarters in a game of bumpers and plungers.  That is not Catholic hyperbole on my part, either.  This illicit establishment becomes his home-away-from-home, including as he awaits his interview with GQ.  On the way to the publication’s offices, he meets Ellen (Crystal Reed) in the elevator.  She is in the building for a different purpose, but is impressed enough with him to give her phone number.  When they are able to meet for coffee, she is open about who she is and what she wants, which is a single mother hoping to get married.  To his credit, he stays, and she is also praiseworthy for being willing to be with a struggling writer.  That last bit is in the movie, but it also spoke to me personally.  At any rate, he begins putting out articles for GQ, but his personal and professional lives collide when the porn shop has its pinball machines confiscated.  This is devastating for him, but it is seeing the interest that Ellen’s son, Seth (Christopher Convery), has in the game that convinces Roger to do something.  That something involves the power of the pen, taking it to the periodical’s editor-in-chief, Jack Haber (Mike Doyle), as a potential article.  Roger gets the approval and the write-up proves a hit.  At the same time, he realizes that there is more to the story than the fact that New York will not allow the machines within city limits.  This goes back to a supposed tie to gambling.  The same companies producing slot machines also made pinball games.  And when there are potential wagers on the line, this means to the powers-that-be that pinball is associated with the mafia.  Finally, because they are primarily aimed at children, it was the final “justification” to get them outlawed.  This happened not just in America’s largest city, but in municipalities around the country, and nobody involved seemed to like Roger asking deeper questions.  The main villain in this is New York City Commissioner Warner (Michael Kostroff).  It is his council that is responsible for keeping the ban in place, and they do not want to give any time to Roger.  There is an effort underway by the Music & Amusement Association (MAA) to overturn the ban, led by Ben Chikofsky (Damian Young), but Roger is not interested in helping at this time.  For the moment, he has two bigger issues taking up his time.  The first is building a relationship with Ellen and Seth.  The second is to complete a book on pinball.  Ellen helps with the second goal since she is a faster typist than Roger.  Though the research for the project takes him away from New York and cuts into his limited funds, Ellen and Seth stay with Roger and they grow closer.  As they get to the end of writing, Ellen brings up what she has been wanting from Roger: a long-term commitment.  He puts it off, wanting to wait until it is completely finished.  However, when that comes, he further hesitates.  Ellen asks him to go, and Roger has to do so with a clearly hurt Seth watching.  It is with a heavy heart, then, that Roger finally agrees to testify in front of Commissioner Warner’s council.  With a live demonstration, Roger convinces them that pinball is a game of skill, not gambling, and they lift their ban.  He also apologizes to Ellen, and we end with shots of the real-life couple and the life they built.

When I say “real life,” that should indicate that Pinball: The Man Who Save the Game is based on a true story.  Some people find this kind of cinema boring, and the poster and trailers for it do nothing to dispel this unfortunate stereotype.  Nonetheless, there are some great themes in it that provide excellent insights into living a fruitful Faith life.  It revolves around some important lessons Roger learns, namely how they pertain to the concept of control.  It is what draws him to pinball in the first place.  When he first manipulates those paddles, he is told that it is all about control, just him and the machine.  Only with his skill can he prevent a negative outcome.  This, despite being about a silly game, is hubris when this idea is applied more broadly.  Though there is nothing Christian about this story, what Roger does not understand is that his talents come from God, and they can easily be taken from him.  The problem is that the world around Him is scary, and pinball is a finite space that bends to his will.  He is not a stand out college student, he is divorced early on, and he barely gets the position at GQ.  In other words, he is afraid of what life could bring him next, which is why he prevaricates in asking Ellen to marry him.  Ironically, it had been her who had warned him of the bad things that had happened to her in previous relationships, which is why she is upfront about what she wants.  Roger fears something bad will happen to him again.  What the movie further explains, and this is something that the Church also teaches, is that once in a while you have to take a risk.  Sometimes, you do not know if a pinball shot will hit its intended mark.  In a Christian context, unless God visibly (or audibly) comes from Heaven to give us a command, we can paralyze ourselves wondering what He wants of us.  I have heard it said that taking that vocational step is like jumping off a cliff with no parachute.  You have to trust that God will be there to catch you.  That is metaphorical, of course, but in reality Roger has Ellen and Seth to do that job as God would have them.  That is why it is a blessing when Roger realizes this fact.

Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game is a blessing of a movie.  As a practicing Catholic, I did not love the fact that he had to go into an adult book store to play his favorite game, but he has the perfect response for this suspicion.  Upon taking Ellen there early in their relationship, she understandably raises concerns.  However, when she asks what is behind the curtain, he replies that he does not know because he has never gone beyond the veil.  For this and many other reasons, the film gets my full recommendation.