Movies About Bowling

A small genre, mostly rented shoes and second chances.

Entries
10
Category
Film
Updated
  1. A black-and-white 1930s bowling alley with two balls rolling side by side down one lane and a row of tap shoes on the floor.

    10. Strikes and Spares

    Felix E. Feist · 1934

    An Oscar-nominated Pete Smith short starring trick bowler Andy Varipapa, billed as the boast of Brooklyn. He rolls two balls at once, picks off diagonal pins and finishes by rolling one under a line of chorus girls. The Academy had a Novelty category. It should come back.

  2. A tiny mousehole in the baseboard of a 1940s bowling alley, with pins scattered everywhere and one cartoonishly bent.

    09. The Bowling Alley-Cat

    William Hanna and Joseph Barbera · 1942

    Tom and Jerry's seventh short: a chase through a bowling alley, and the first of their cartoons built around a sport. Seven minutes, no dialogue, more pins knocked down per second than any feature on this list. The mouse wins. The mouse usually wins.

  3. A black lawn bowl knocking a small white jack off a seaside green, gray English sea in the background.

    08. Blackball

    Mel Smith · 2003

    A British lawn bowls comedy based on Griff Sanders, the real-life Bad Boy of Bowls, with Paul Kaye as the rebel, James Cromwell as the establishment and Vince Vaughn as the promoter. Shot on the Isle of Man and in Torquay, the two most rock and roll places in Britain.

  4. A giant shiny apple trophy on a bowling lane, a basketball and a bowling ball sitting on either side of it.

    07. Alley Cats Strike

    Rod Daniel · 2000

    A Disney Channel Original Movie in which a junior-high basketball tie between two towns has to be settled by bowling, as it should. The nerds in the bowling club get a popular jock by prank sign-up. Kaley Cuoco co-stars. Diplomacy should work this way.

  5. A neon-lit underground bowling alley in Seoul with stacks of cash on the scorer's table and a single headphone set on a ball.

    06. Split

    Choi Kook-hee · 2016

    A Korean sports film about a washed-up bowling legend who teams with an autistic prodigy and a bookie to work the gambling lanes. Yoo Ji-tae of Oldboy leads. It is Kingpin with less slapstick and more betting, which is honestly what Kingpin was missing.

  6. A bowling ball resting on a riverside dock in a small Midwestern town at dawn, a towel and a trophy beside it.

    05. Dreamer

    Noel Nosseck · 1979

    Tim Matheson as a small-town Illinois ten-pin whiz trying to make the pro tour, with Jack Warden as the cranky manager and a score by Rocky's Bill Conti. Critics noticed the resemblance to Rocky. Bill Conti did not help. Dick Weber, a real legend, bookends it.

  7. A manicured lawn bowls green in suburban Australia, a white sun hat and a set of keys on a reserved parking post at its edge.

    04. Crackerjack

    Paul Moloney · 2002

    Mick Molloy holds three memberships at a lawn bowls club purely to rent out the free parking spaces, then has to actually play when a developer wants pokies. It was Australia's highest-grossing local film of 2002. The parking scheme alone deserves a sequel.

  8. A motor home parked outside a bowling center in winter, a snow shovel leaning against it and a row of trophies visible through its window.

    03. A League of Ordinary Gentlemen

    Christopher Browne · 2006

    Three ex-Microsoft programmers buy the PBA and hire a Nike marketer to save it. Meanwhile Walter Ray Williams Jr., the best bowler alive, wins title 37 and celebrates by shoveling snow off his motor home. The most honest sports documentary ever aired on PBS.

  9. A rubber prosthetic hand resting on a ball return beside a bowling ball, an Amish straw hat and a Reno casino chip on the scorer's table.

    02. Kingpin

    Peter and Bobby Farrelly · 1996

    Woody Harrelson loses a hand in a ball return, then coaches an Amish phenom played by Randy Quaid to a $1 million tournament in Reno. Bill Murray's Big Ern has the worst combover in sports. Real pros Mark Roth and Parker Bohn III cameo. Siskel put it on his 1996 top ten.

  10. A worn Persian rug laid across a bowling lane under neon stars, a white russian in a lowball glass resting on the ball return.

    01. The Big Lebowski

    Joel and Ethan Coen · 1998

    A Chandler mystery whose detective would rather be at the lanes. All the bowling was shot over three weeks at Hollywood Star Lanes, and its neon stars became the film's visual motif. Mixed reviews in 1998, National Film Registry in 2014. The Dude abides. Critics revised.

Honorable mentions

  • A rack of bowling pins in a high school gym storage room, lit by a single window, quiet and still.

    Bowling for Columbine

    Michael Moore · 2002

    Not a bowling movie; an Oscar-winning documentary about American gun violence. The title comes from a story that the Columbine shooters attended a bowling class that morning, which later investigations found was a mistaken recollection. Listed here so nobody mistakes it for one.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A purple bowling ball with no lane in sight, sitting on the hood of a stolen classic muscle car on a desert road.

    The Jesus Rolls

    John Turturro · 2019

    Turturro got the Coens' blessing to revive Jesus Quintana, then put him in a remake of a 1974 French road movie with barely any bowling. Shot in 2016, released in 2020, bombed. Rotten Tomatoes says it rolls limply into the gutter. Nobody touches the Jesus, including audiences.

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