There are a lot of sports movies out there. A lot. Baseball and football comprise the bulk of them, but there are a few basketball and hockey pictures too. Inevitably, one would think with so many sports pictures, there would be several good ones out there, but I can't think of more than ten that I would recommend to anyone. These would be, in no particular order, Hoosiers, Field of Dreams, Rocky, the Karate Kid, Raging Bull, Jerry Maguire, Hoop Dreams, Kingpin, the Basketball Diaries, and When We Were Kings. That's about it. This may seem like a lot at first glance, but you should see the hundreds of sports movies that are absent. I've been waiting for a good sports flick to come along for some time now, but sadly He Got Game doesn't make the cut.
Spike Lee's 1998 basketball effort is well-directed, but only partially well-acted. On the one hand, it stars real-life Milwaukee Bucks player Ray Allen as Jesus Shuttlesworth in a relatively fresh performance and a stong Denzel Washington as his jailbird father Jake, but their scenes get railroaded with screeching turns by Zelda Harris as his little sister and Milla Jovovich in an underwritten, underplayed part as the token prostitute. Ned Beatty is adequate as the warden who solicits Jake to recruit Jesus in exchange for a reduced sentence, and Rosario Dawson plays Lala, Jesus's philandering girlfriend.
Where the movie excels is its dizzying cinematography and editing. Lee ably captures the frenzy that comes with drafting a young high school player, an aspect not many sports movies tend to focus on. Exceptional shots permeate the entire work, and it's obvious that Lee really loves the game and is having a fun -- and reverent -- time demonstrating its attributes. The rest of the plot, however, is a by-the-numbers estranged father/reluctant son story, and no amount of creative shots or explosive dialogue can hide its banality. Father tries to talk to son at the basketball court. Father tries to talk to son at his house. Father tries to talk to son on the boardwalk. Son is angry about lots of things. Father plays son on the basketball court to settle their differences. Yawn.
The picture tears itself in too many directions to be a valid entry in Lee's eclectic and underrated resume of films. It may be the same man who gave us Malcolm X and Do the Right Thing, but from a narrative perspective he seems to have set his sights too low, and the results speak for themselves. He Got Game has a unique, surreal ending that can be interpreted a few different ways. Unfortunately, it's too little too late, and here it comes across more like a Hail Mary shot at the buzzer.
