Sugar (Laszlo)

The movie "Sugar" is an appropriate choice for our theme on the "American Dream" and Hispanic Heritage Month because it is about a young man nicknamed Sugar from the Dominican Republic who's been playing baseball since his father died when he was very young. The movie follows Sugar's adventures as he gets drafted to a team in the United States, the Kansas City Knights. This is an appropriate movie for our theme "The American Dream" because there is no definite definition to the American Dream, but rather an individuals' idea generally on "making it" in America. The idea can shift one one person simply living a comfortable life in their own homes with a stable job and steady income to another person's idea that when you come to America you get famous! and rich! and people know you everywhere you go.

In "Sugar", the protagonist, Sugar, is recruited to an American team from where he's been in the Dominican Republic. The movie makes it seem that everyone in the DR is looking to get out of there and go to America and play baseball, but so few actually get to go. There is a little bit of irony portrayed by a few of the characters about twenty minutes into the film when they go out from their little enclosed training course past curfew and get drunk for fun. The night ends on a serious note, however, when they all proclaim "Screw baseball!" because all of them have been there for the closer end of a decade. The irony presents itself the next day when they're throwing up all over the field and hung over for the game. As expected, they got a talking to from one of the managers or something like that... but only two of them. After the stern speech, the vibe turns into friendly and celebratory as the manager announces that they're being sent to the United States.

I really like this movie for the ending, which came a little unexpected to me. The way that I thought this movie was going to turn out was that Sugar would go to the United States and being one of the best players in the DR before, would either really suck in the States or flatly  trump everyone and like the American Dream can be seen, make it big and get his family out of the DR and support them in the States altogether. But NO! The movie took a little bit of a twist of both to create an ending I did not see coming. At first Sugar was pretty good and was striking people out but the fame was kindof getting to his head and he started forgetting about his girlfriend back home and fell for this white girl that was the daughter of the people he was staying with in Iowa. (A volunteer home almost) The girl basically rejected him and that was the start of Sugar's downfall. After the girl, his friend Jorge ended up getting booted from the team because he was injured and couldn't play as well as the others. At around the same time, one of Sugar's friends from the DR and the same training team replaced him but this new guy was better than Sugar, too. What do you know happens next? Sugar gets injured and put on hold. At this part in the movie, you can see a sort of pattern of the players on the team; they were treated as if they were simply parts to a machine and when they couldn't perform? They got switched out for better ones. The pattern can be seen that Jorge was dropped and then Miguel gets an injury and a better player is boarded. I saw this as a bit of foreshadowing to Miguel getting dropped next. Which is almost the same as ending the movie or killing off the main character, like in Psycho. 
A pleasantly interesting turn took part when Miguel ran off from the team to join his friend Jorge in NYC before getting booted. It was nice because at least Sugar also knew that it was going to happen. In NYC, he even starts working in the same place that Jorge worked at, although he did not even get a hold of him because the number changed.

The movie ends with Sugar meeting up with Jorge eventually and going back to play baseball but not with any major teams. Rather, a scrap team if you can call it that. The team consisted of players from all sorts of big teams, including even the Swings that he played for before but the team was not competitive. All of the players seemed to have gone through the same pressures that cracked Miguel and were now on the team to have fun, which is all they all ever seem to have wanted to begin with.
This is why I like the movie, because it twists the theme of American Dream into what it and life should be all about the whole time: having fun and doing what you really like. It had a happy ending, but not a Hollywood ending.