Ali Not The Greatest!!!!!!

Rating: 1/10 (8 January 2002)

Imagine watching a person run through the villiages of Africa for 20 minutes, looking at paintings of himself on the buildings, people chanting his name. Now, imagine watching that same scene in slow motion. That is exactly what we got in the movie Ali, a long, slow motion scene of Ali running through a villiage in Africa while looking at paintings on the wall.
(Some Spoilers ahead-It is based on a true story)
Ali had such promise, and delivered very little. The opening moments of the movie seem to last forever, probably because that song was 15 minutes long. Finally, after a long 15 minute intro, we get actual dialogue.

Ali does nothing to keep us into this film. What seemed to be an important part of his life, the whole draft dodge, the court cases, the battle, etc....once again, is put on the back burner, almost as it never really happened. One minute he can't fight, the next minute, we are greeted to a 2 minute scene with Joe Frazier. If you want to see the Joe Frazier portion of Ali's life, don't blink, because it is over that fast. What was one of the greatest feuds in all of sports, this movie shows us very, very little of this feud. Instead, we are shown a long drawn out scene of Ali Running, and then a slow motion boxing match with Foreman that ends the match. You want to know more of Ali's life after George Forman, read a book, because this film stops there.
In this long three hour movie, we learn next to nothing about the "greatest" boxer of all time. We learn about a friendship between Howard Cossel and Ali that was not to be(Entertainment Weekly suggests that they only had a business relaitionship.) We get very little of Joe Fraizer.

In the end, all we got was to pay $8.50 for a three hour nap.