Ed

Jack Cooper is a gifted pitcher whose nerves keep getting the better of him, and a trade to a minor league club leaves him struggling to find his form and connect with his new teammates. The situation takes a strange turn when he learns that one of those teammates, Ed, is a chimpanzee who once served as the team mascot but was promoted after showing a real knack for playing third base. The pairing gives both the pitcher and the Santa Rosa Rockets a new direction.

Bill Couturié directed the film, working from a screenplay by David Mickey Evans. Matt LeBlanc plays Jack, with Jayne Brook, Bill Cobbs and Jack Warden in supporting roles; Ed Sullivan is performed by Jay Caputo and Denise Cheshire. The production cost about 24 million US dollars and returned roughly 4 million worldwide, a gap that indicates it found little commercial traction during its 1996 theatrical run. Audience scores are low: 2.8 out of 10 on IMDb from around 9,100 votes and 4.1 out of 10 on TMDB from about 140 votes. A critics' rating of 2.7 out of 10 from 17 reviews puts professional response in the same range as the viewer reaction, with no meaningful divide between the two.