Any number of athletes have played themselves on film, but identical twins and failed baseball players Logan and Noah Miller are apparently the first to have written and directed their own story as well.
Their utter lack of distance from the material doesn’t help the sometimes painfully sincere male weepie “Touching Home,” whose making the Millers have already recounted in a best-selling book.
Perhaps their most impressive achievement is signing up Ed Harris as their father, a drunken gambler. But even the considerable skill Harris brings to bear can’t compensate for the Millers’ inability as writers or directors to pull off this misguided tribute to the old man, who in real life died in prison.
In this sentimentalized version, he passes away in a forest on Christmas morning after a period of sobriety supervised by a kindly police officer (Robert Forster), who was previously the boys’ Little League coach.
Even if the Millers forgive the old man for an incredible act of betrayal — which the film indicates is only the latest of many ways he has made things hell for his sons their entire lives — I didn’t feel anywhere near as generous.
The Millers, who use other names to play themselves in the film, possibly for legal reasons (their mother isn’t even mentioned), have returned to their hometown in a rural section near the San Francisco Bay after one is cut by a minor league baseball team and the other loses his baseball scholarship.
They’re trying to save up enough money for another tryout, working with their father at a gravel pit during the day, cleaning laundromats at night and living with pop’s mother (Lee Meriwether, the real-life Miss America of 1955), an alcoholic herself, who has banned dad from the house.
While the Millers have a physical presence, they’re hardly actors. In fact, it’s often difficult to tell them apart, although one of them is missing a tooth and takes off his shirt a lot.
Evan Jones and Brandon Hanson provide some comic relief as their pals, Ishiah Benben is the chaste romantic interest for one sib, and Brad Dourif ups the schmaltz factor as pop’s mentally challenged brother.
“Touching Home” is surprisingly watchable under the circumstances, though I suspect a making-of documentary would probably be more interesting.