Parents' Guide to

Reverse the Curse

By Jeffrey M. Anderson, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 15+

Father-son baseball story has language, drug use.

Movie NR 2024 105 minutes
Reverse the Curse Movie Poster: Mariana, a resigned-looking Marty, and Ted are on a baseball stadium field

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

  • Reverse the Curse Movie: Marty sits grasping his cane and speaking to someone, while Ted leans on the back of his chair
  • Reverse the Curse Movie: Dressed-up Ted, who holds a bouquet of flowers, and Mariana appear at the door of someone's house
  • Reverse the Curse Movie: Seen from a distance, Marty and Ted have stopped by a lake and are stretching their arms out

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What's the Story?

In REVERSE THE CURSE, Ted (Logan Marshall-Green) is a failed novelist who works selling peanuts at Yankee Stadium in the summer of 1978. He's contacted by a Death Specialist named Mariana (Stephanie Beatriz), who tells Ted that his father, Marty (David Duchovny), is dying of cancer. Marty is a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan who sees his own life as a failure, mirroring the fate of his favorite team. This year, the Sox are way ahead of their rivals, the Yankees, in the standings, but as fall approaches, the Yanks start to catch up. Ted—who's been staying with Marty to look after him—discovers that his father's mood is bolstered whenever the Sox win, so, with the help of Mariana and Marty's pals at the local barbershop, he cooks up a scheme to make it seem as if the Sox are on a huge winning streak. But there may be more to life than baseball.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

A passion project by Duchovny, this father-son dramedy resorts to some hokey moments to keep its "lie" plot afloat, but its emotions and love of baseball are genuine. Directed and written by Duchovny and based on his own 2016 novel, Reverse the Curse has some scenes that might seem more at home in a juvenile comedy, such as a farting contest or a group of middle-aged men trying to create a fake "rainstorm" using a garden hose and metal sheet pans (and, perhaps worse, another character believing that it's real). And the budding romance between Ted and Mariana seems incidental at best.

But when things settle in to the genuine, they tend to work. Ted and Marty occasionally have comical arguments that morph into small revelations, and a visit to a woman whom the widowed Marty once loved turns out to be surprisingly sweet. Duchovny reserves the movie's tastiest dialogue for himself, understandably; when Marty is forced to wear a suit, he mutters, "I look like a vertical corpse ... a pterodactyl." The movie's best parts, though, are the father-son dynamic and the ode to baseball. No games are ever shown (a bit of a game is heard on the radio, and there's some TV commentary and newspaper articles), but the love of baseball is all over Reverse the Curse. The movie celebrates how the sport brings people together.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about Reverse the Curse's depiction of drugs. Is drug use glamorized? Are there realistic consequences? Why does that matter?

  • How is sex depicted? Is it comical? Complex? Is there trust? Consent? Why do these things matter?

  • How do the characters demonstrate the importance of communication?

  • What do you think a Death Specialist might do? Does it seem like they would be helpful? Why, or why not?

  • Why has the story of the Red Sox and the "Curse of the Bambino" been so fascinating to so many people for so long?

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