In 1976, the New York City Council voted unanimously to overturn the city’s thirty-plus year ban on pinball – yes, pinball. The arcade game had been illegal in New York, and several other cities around the country, as it was considered nothing more than a game of chance, another form of gambling. And even worse: the game targeted children, designed to both steal their lunch money and get them hooked on gambling.
Efforts were made during the ban to overturn the law, but all failed, until that fateful day in 1976. It took one man, pinball enthusiast and historian Roger Sharpe, to finally legalize pinball in New York City. And as a result, most other major cities soon followed suit. Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game tells this story.
If this sounds like a silly story to make into a feature length film, well, you would be right. But that’s part of the fun. It’s also a rather thin story, so the movie becomes more of a mini-biography of Sharpe (dually played by Mike Faist as the younger, 70s era Sharpe, with Dennis Boutsikaris as the present-day counterpart), taking viewers through a snapshot of his life during that time.
Sharpe first fell in love with pinball while in college at the University of Wisconsin, playing it regularly in one of the local bars. After graduation, he dreams of becoming a writer. That journey eventually leads him to a staff writer job at GQ. This is all before he even knows pinball is illegal in the city. He doesn’t seem to give it a second thought that the only machines he can find are located in an adult bookstore. Only when the police raid the bookstore and remove the machines does he learn of the ridiculous ban.
Roger eventually pitches a story about pinball to his editor who lets him run with it, though not as far as Roger would like. This passion and excitement leads to him successfully selling a book idea for a coffee table book about pinball. The research for his book leads him to interviewing all the pinball bigwigs, a handful of whom had previously been loathe to grant interviews.
Tied up in all the pinball activities is a fairly engaging, if formulaic, love story. Just by chance, Roger meets Ellen (Crystal Reed) on the elevator ride to his GQ interview. Ellen also has an 11-year-old son Seth (Christopher Convery). Roger, using pinball as the entry point (of course), begins to form a fatherly bond with him.
This all may feel simple and low stakes. But that’s because it is. And that’s where Pinball finds most of its charm. It doesn’t try to hold pinball up as some great morality allegory, using it as a stand-in for some greater injustice. Pinball was, and is, a simple game that was made illegal when it shouldn’t have been. A dedicated group of people saw that and wanted to change it. Brothers Austin and Meredith Bragg co-wrote and co-directed the movie, and their restraint should be commended.
It would have been all too easy for them to add flash and pomp and circumstance to the whole ordeal. Make the fight for pinball known throughout the state and even country. But no. It remains a fight with the local city council. They keep the stakes low, as they should be. It adds a much-needed element of realism to the movie. This is a true-enough “true story” and it feels that way. There’s nothing that happens in Pinball that comes off as a “Hollywood” addition. In fact, the movie itself even pokes fun at that notion.
Pinball is told in a fake documentary style, with Boutsikaris recounting his story to an unseen film crew. There are a couple instances where the movie shows a fictitious account of what happened, and the elder Sharpe stops them and calls them out for it. This narrative style is another way to add some creativity and a unique feel that elevates the basic story.
With all Pinball has going for it, it’s Mike Faist and Crystal Reed at the center of it all. The movie is as much about them as it is about pinball. Their relationship is very grounded and believable, and they both play it that way. Once again, the Braggs go for realism, and once again, the movie is better off for it. Both characters are properly fleshed out, when it would have been simple and easy to put even more focus on Sharpe and leave Ellen to be nothing more than the stereotypical girlfriend character. Ellen doesn’t get many of the comedic moments, but her presence is key to nailing the emotional heart of the movie.
But as great as Reed is as Ellen, Faist is the star here. I haven’t seen him in much, only the Amazon Prime Video series Panic and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake. Both allowed him to showcase his clear talent, but neither had much room for humor. But the man’s got it.
The laughs in Pinball lean more into “everyday” type humor rather than big gut-busting laughs. I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but it’s another example of the Braggs understanding exactly what type of movie they have. The humor was perfect in tone. There’s consistent humor but the script knows when to lean away from it and let the drama take center stage.
I went into Pinball knowing nothing about it other than that pinball had in fact been illegal in some places (and I only even knew that thanks to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza). And I came out of it thinking that this is going to remain one of my favorite movies of the year. As much as I love the big-name, blockbuster, and Oscar type movies, I equally love finding movies like Pinball. Well-made, well-acted, effective movies that arrive with little to no fanfare, but manage to go toe-to-toe with other more heralded releases.
With the true story, creative storytelling, and a dynamite Faist leading the way, I can’t recommend Pinball enough.
Score: 85/100
