‘The Babe’ (PG)

In "The Babe," John Goodman doesn't just fill Babe Ruth's larger-than- life shoes, he splits them at the seams. Heavier than the real baseball player after a steak-and-beer binge, Goodman's big in every other department, too -- too big, in fact.

In this Universal movie, he's a one-dimensional, homer-hitting party animal. When he's not knocking them out of the park, he's swallowing hot dogs, chomping cigars, drinking until 3 a.m. and using his abundant flatulence to -- in his own mind -- humorous effect. "Pull this," he says, offering an enormous finger to an unsuspecting socialite . . . .

For all the salty bluster, there's no Babe -- at least nothing real to grab on to. How real could anyone be in a latex nose that even Bozo the Clown would reject as obvious? Goodman's big-guy performance (pretty much the same one he used for "King Ralph") affords some occasionally funny moments. But he's just an abstract effigy going through a series of baseball biography highlights.

Those highlights start in 1902 with Ruth's unceremonious entry into St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys. Any serious purposes Goodman (or the movie) may have had are ruined immediately when he portrays Ruth as a teenager. The sight of Goodman stuffed into a suit several sizes too small, under a mop of blackened hair, and those layers of nose -- well, it makes you smile for all the wrong reasons.

After he is recruited by the Orioles (smashed church windows and tut-tutting Catholic fathers behind him), the highlights speed up. He plays for the Red Sox, the Yankees and the Braves, with a lot of pranks, 20-ounce steaks and homers along the way. In one game, he gets the first infield home run in baseball: He hits it so high, he's back at home base before it lands. He knocks it over Fenway's center wall. He clears it out of Yankee Stadium. There's the famous "called shot" in which he deliberately allows two strikes before knocking one out of Wrigley Field in the World Series.

The years whiz by. Goodman's life worsens. So does his nose. An overgrown child, he doesn't know how to deal with his fast life. The only things he can get along with are food and kids -- whom he showers with gifts whenever possible. "Are you Santa Claus?" asks one child.

There's an ill-fated marriage with waitress Trini Alvarado. There's a better one with former showgirl Kelly McGillis. Unfortunately, McGillis is doomed to spending the rest of the movie rooting for Goodman from the stands.

Everything's played so big, there's no room for singles, small details that show touching moments. In "Babe," everything's got to be a homer or nothing. The movie's so concerned with upping its ante, it forgets the ante's fine on its own sometimes. When Goodman promises a dying kid he'll hit not one but two home runs for him, that's one more than is said to have happened. What's wrong with one good homer? Goodman's still getting one for the nipper. Well, that's inflation for you.