This is a friendly, passable production but doesn't offer anything to make it worth the investment of time. In its own fluffy but hollow, Hollywood way, its kind of endearing and the pairing of Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson is effective - effective enough to launch them into another buddy film later on The Money Train, which turned out to be ironically titled. Unfortunately, The film never gets beyond being mild entertainment and when you throw the screeching Rosie Perez into the mix, there has to be something better you can be doing with your time.


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Other Critic's Reviews:
eFilmCritic
Roger Ebert

Labels: basketball, film, movie review, Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson

Maybe the best sports film of all time. Following the rise of a small town basketball team, this film inspires and entertains. Gene Hackman gives a top notch performance as the troubled head coach Norman Dale. An absolute must-see for anyone who loves sports.


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DVDweeb.com
Christian Spotlight

Labels: basketball, Dennis Hopper, film, Gene Hackman, movie review, sports movie

The piece certainly isn't breaking new ground. How many films can we have about civil rights "firsts"? Well a dozen or so as it turns out. This plays the typical formula: blacks get their first shot at something because a white guy sticks his neck out. Like most of films of this nature, it seems to be more about how heroic the white guy is, rather than about the blacks defeating bigotry. If you can swallow the pill this film offers it is a well structured piece that does entertain. You will get the feeling you've seen this before however.


Related Reviews:
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Mystery, Alaska (1999)
The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005)


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Labels: basketball, film, Jon Voight, Josh Lucas, movie review, sports movie

This is supposed to be stupid, so complaining that this is dumb is redundant. I guess the best way to put it is that its dumber than it wants to be. This is, by any definition, a poorly made movie. Even giving it the low expectations it begs for, this film still fails in a pathetic display of sloppy writing, amateurish direction and confused acting.

This production was clearly built around the one-trick pony (but its a great trick) Will Ferrell. But like Blades of Glory, there is little development to maintain a full movie. Ferrell expends his comedic arsenal in his introduction and wanders the rest of the film struggling through seemingly random events that are quickly set up and sputter to their resolutions. Saturday Night Live skits normally begin with the premise and then quickly bottom out, leaving the actors to run through their unfunny lines until they arrive at the forced ending of the bit. This movie is ninety minutes of that uncomfortable feeling SNL offers of performers putting their time in as an unfunny skit runs itself out. All this amounts to is watching actors spew filthy lines that they know aren't funny - doesn't sound like too much fun does it?

Trust me, the Old Spice ads the marketing of this film produced are 1000% funnier than the film. If you've seen those ads, count it is being close enough and skip seeing the movie.


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Labels: basketball, comedy, sports, Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson