It’s been a stormy week, but that’s passed as the 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival kicked off. Milwaukee Film always aims to get it started with a party and the choice of film for opening night, UECK, about much beloved Milwaukee Brewers broadcasting icon was guaranteed to do so.
The love for Bob Uecker was present in a sold-out Oriental Theatre before the film started. The line stretched around the block. There wasn’t any rain. There were cans of Miller Lite within the theater. And the crowd was ready to celebrate Bob Uecker.
The only real question is, was UECK going to be a good film or just a good, nostalgic send off to a favorite?
I’m happy to report that I thought it was actually good. I’m sure some of my own affection for Bob Uecker colored that appraisal, but I think you could see that it was a labor of love that went beyond the bare minimum to please the hometown fans.
UECK has two narrative tracks. One track covers Bob Uecker’s last season broadcasting the Brewers after over 50 years in the radio booth from the end of the 2023 season through the 2024 season. The Brewers have never won the World Series and the last time they even played in it was 1982, so there was a real longing for it to happen once before Uecker’s career as radio broadcaster ends.
The other thread traces Uecker’s life and career through a plethora of archive footage including lots of footage from his frequent appearances on The Tonight Show, his Miller Lite ad appearances, his role on the sitcom Mr. Belvedere, and, of course, his scene stealing turn in Major League.
It’s no spoiler that each of those playoff runs ended in disappointment. Bob Uecker was a major league baseball player, but a backup who joked about being bad. And the Brewers didn’t supply a fairy tale ending. Yet, why don’t I consider this a sad story?
I’ll refer to this recent observation by critic Scott Tobias looking back at The Bad News Bears in the Substack newsletter The Reveal: “The secret formula of The Bad News Bears—a philosophy later refined by Ron Shelton in Bull Durham, White Men Can’t Jump and Tin Cup—is that the best sports movies end in failure. Or to be more specific, the best sports movies end in a more idiosyncratic form of triumph.”
Scott Tobias lives in Chicago and, as far as I know, has no connection to Wisconsin or the Brewers. But, let’s face it, rooting for the Brewers over the decades has been a lot like following The Bad News Bears as they faced better financed and more polished competition. Now, imagine broadcasting the team nearly every day for their trials and tribulations and occasional triumph without ever winning the championship. Bob Uecker’s triumph was that however bad it could get for Milwaukee, it never really got him down and it was always a joy to listen to him. The result was much love from the community for Bob.
The success of the movie is that it gets across that idiosyncratic triumph. Bob Uecker could have been a bitter former player griping about not really getting a chance, but instead he turned to standup and joked about how bad he was. He covered a largely bad team and told entertaining stories on the air, and often united a community. He tried a variety of things, never was really considered for awards, but still managed to entertain people and win fans.
Now there are caveats. No new ground is really covered. But, more importantly, there are too few appearances of the man behind the familiar jovial schtick. Now, a lot of the schtick is genuine and honest in its way. I feel “It was just a bit outside” speaks the fantasy of a more interesting game that a broadcaster might wish he was watching, for instance. But, I felt that you only see glimpses and peaks or the more serious man underneath. We don’t get a real good picture of Bob Uecker as a husband or father. We only get the occasional reference to personal struggles. In the Q&A after, a filmmaker spoke of how much preparation that Bob Uecker would put into his broadcasts. My follow-up question is why wasn’t that included? Choices were made from no doubt hours of footage, but I feel that they could have gotten around the armor with the material they had to a greater extent.
Still a good time was had by all in attendance. It’s a fitting tribute and certainly not a story that was going to be told by Hollywood. It’s a fitting portrait of Bob. He’ll be missed.
The 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival runs from April 16, 2026 until May 30, 2026. UECK had its one and only showing Opening Night, but it was announced that it will have a run in Marcus Theaters in July. Tickets to many other upcoming films can be purchased at MKEFILM.ORG.
