Film Friday: Jack Of All Trades
Spoiler Warning: The following contains spoilers for the documentary Jack Of All Trades, which is now streaming on Netflix.
Growing up I loved collecting comic books and baseball cards. It didn’t matter what the story was or what teams they were on, getting a new comic book or opening a new pack of baseball cards was always a euphoric experience. When I saw Jack Of All Trades on Netflix described as a documentary covering the scandal that “rocked the multi-million-dollar [baseball card] industry for good” I knew I had to watch it. The documentary ends up covering something of a scandal but also tries to tell a parallel story of a man dealing with the previous abandonment from his father. While both stories are interesting in their own right, the documentary struggles to do both.
The focal point of Jack Of All Trades is Stu Stone, a former child actor whose father, Jack, owned a quite popular baseball card shop in Toronto. As Stu cleans out boxes in his mother’s apartment, he notices he has several old boxes of unopened baseball cards. He tries to sell them at a baseball card trade show but is surprised to find out they’re worth practically nothing. What follows is an investigation into how an industry that was practically printing money could become so valueless…sort of. We also are sprinkled in tidbits early to find out that Stu has been repressing the emotions of dealing with his father abandoning the family a few weeks after his bar mitzvah. This comes to a head about thirty minutes into the documentary when the filmmaker tells Stu on screen that baseball cards are boring and he’d rather “talk about how [Stu’s] dad fucking his employees.”
The rest of the movie runs on parallel tracks. There are battling narratives. Stu is trying to figure out what happened to the baseball card industry—including speaking to Jose Canseco, executives from Topps and Upper Deck, and even the man who holds the world record for owning the most baseball cards in the world, “Foul Ball” Paul. The filmmaker and Stu’s sister are trying to get in touch with Stu’s father to set up an interview so Stu can feel more fulfilled in life, as we are told Stu has let this affect his friendships and relationships. We see both old cards and explanations of the boom of baseball cards in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and also a lot of footage from Stu’s bar mitzvah. A lot of it. The movie tries to bring this together in the end when Stu meets his father at a Toronto hotel room and is able to both ask him about the baseball card industry and why he left.
Inside this documentary there is a really interesting, half-told story about baseball card manufacturers lying about the scarcity of some cards and printing more of those cards to capitalize on the inflated value. There is also a familiar story of a son who idolized his father coming to grips with the fact that his father wasn’t all he seemed to a young kid. The biggest issue is trying to fit both of those stories into a 90-minute documentary made each story feel incomplete. We never really are given enough information to feel that there was a massive scandal in the baseball card industry. It’s hinted at several times, and we’re told how valueless these cards are. We’re told Stu is affected by his dad, but we aren’t given any actual examples of it from his life.
The documentary ends with Stu and his friends burning old baseball cards. It works both as Stu burning the pain from his past and another reminder of how much value they’ve lost. It’s a cool ending, and you can tell the cathartic effect it has for Stu. I wish it had the same effect on the viewer.
Is this worth watching? If you loved baseball cards, then I think you’d enjoy it. If you didn’t, then I think you’re fine skipping it. The human element is interesting but underdeveloped and, sadly, not unique.