Family / Sports
2019 / 92 minutes
RATING: 7/10

Kyle Cooke is an 11-year-old baseball prodigy who’s always the best kid on the field. When he gets cut from an all-star team – the coach picks his own kids instead of the best kids – his already impressive work ethic goes into overdrive. Kyle is going to make his next season the best ever, so he can take whatever team he’s on all the way to the 12-year-olds’ World Series.

That sums up both what’s great about Twelve and what’s wonky with it too. If you have kids who aren’t overly obsessed with sports then showing them a film about a 12-year-old who lives, sleeps, and breathes his sport could be a good bit of inspiration. If they really want to make their high school basketball team, or get onto the junior high cross-country team, then they need to put in the work. They could do with being more like Kyle.

But Kyle, and his dad too, are quite a bit too invested in baseball. The saving grace is that theirs is a love-of-the-game kind of obsession and not a win-at-any-costs kind of thing. The dad proves he’s too into baseball when he lets his generally solid sportsmanship slip after his son gets cut unfairly from the all-star team. And Kyle shows he’s too obsessed in that his life doesn’t have anything else to it but baseball. That said, he is respectful to coaches and to his dad. And even though he is by far the best player on his new team, he doesn’t have an inflated ego around his teammates.

So, the pluses are some fun training montages, cute interactions between him and his big brother (and his big brother’s girlfriend, who is rooting for him), lots of drive and determination, and a fairly low tension level, which might be nice for the 10-12 year-old target audience – there’s never really any doubt that Kyle is going to go all the way.

Cautions

The most notable negative is, again, just how seriously this family takes baseball, getting pretty close to a substitute religion, moderated only by the fact that the two boys aren’t obsessed with winning (Kyle is super confident he will win, but he doesn’t get all stressed out about it).

Language concerns are minor: Kyle’s brother “X” almost says a bad word, starting off with “bullsh…” before ending on a better note with “….shoes.” Dad does it once too.

Oh, and if you try to stream this, beware of the 2010 film of the same name which is about drugs, not sports.

Conclusion

The consensus in our house rated Twelve a solid 7. The one holdout didn’t like the abrupt ending and dropped her initial 10 all the way down to a 0 – she wanted a little bit longer with these characters, but the final credits start just a couple of minutes after the climax. So, take that for what you will.

If you’re looking for sports flick with some good camaraderie, and not too much of an edge, this will fit the bill… as long as your kids aren’t as sports-obsessed as Kyle. Check out the trailer below for a good overview of the admirable and the obsessive.