Feel-Good movie that never quite gives you that warm and fuzzy feeling...

Rating: 5/10 (24 January 2005)

This is a story that deserves to be told and a movie that tries hard to be above average and probably could have been in the hands of a better director. Ultimately, however, it gets dragged down by a sub-par and cliché' ridden script, boring pacing, average-at-best character development, below average acting (except Sam Jackson who turns in a pretty good performance and makes it at least watchable), extremely poor basketball choreography, and choppy editing.
This is, on the one hand, a movie about life. But the story as portrayed isn't as gripping as it should be and comes off like a melodramatic after-school special (stay in school kids, don't get your girlfriend pregnant, don't deal drugs, etc...). It has the right message, to be sure, but we've seen it done before a hundred and one times...and far better. Perhaps most telling was the fact that during scenes when Sam Jackson wasn't on screen I (and all 3 of the people I went to see the movie with) became extremely bored, extremely fast. To say Sam Jackson carried this movie is a huge understatement. The film tries to show us how the coach reaches these kids, but in the end it just doesn't have much of an impact. Why would we feel sorry for a drug-dealer who has been given so little screen time and is otherwise shown to be little more than a petty thug? Why would I care if Worm makes it? Short of his ridiculous and ultimately unbelievable Shakesperean soliloquy towards the end of the film, we're not really given any hint there is a single brain-cell in his head. A big part of the problem is that other than Sam Jackson the acting is extremely weak, and you absolutely need a strong ensemble cast to get a powerful emotional message across to an audience. Unfortunately, this film fails on almost all counts to help us relate to and care for these characters. In the end, the story just doesn't "grab" you like it should and that can only be chalked up to a whole host of things that went wrong to make this movie into another coulda, woulda, shoulda exercise in frustration.
This is also a film about basketball, and had this portion of the film been exciting then perhaps it could have made up for the glaring weaknesses in the story-telling department. Ironically, I have a feeling the film-makers felt this way too so they decided to edit the basketball scenes into what they thought would be "exciting" in order to hold the audience's interest. Unfortunately, the result is that Coach Carter is an even bigger failure on the court than it is in the classroom: the on-court scenes themselves are choreographed amateurishly and obviously edited for today's PS2 crowd with the attention spans of gnats. Real basketball? You won't find much here. What you will find are plenty of dunks. Every basketball scene in this movie goes something like this: DUNK, DUNK, DUNK...3-pointer...DUNK, DUNK, DUNK...{show a couple seconds of Sam Jackson yelling something unintelligible on the sidelines}...DUNK, DUNK, DUNK. Rinse, repeat. YAWN.
It doesn't help that virtually none of the actors on the team actually move like real basketball players on the court (especially "Worm" who is absolutely NOT an athlete). Perhaps this is why they edited it so much with quick cutaway shots...to cover for the athletic weaknesses of their actors. Is it that hard to find actors in Hollywood who have actually played a sport before and can look reasonably athletic doing it on film?
I played 4 years of college basketball and have coached at various levels over the past 5 years since. While I am no John Wooden, I know a thing or two about the game and trust me...you won't find one nugget of actual basketball knowledge or wisdom, one ounce of reality with regards to how high school basketball is truly played. You won't find that magic moment when a coach is able to drag out perfect performances from a flawed team. What you will find is a steady dose of rim-rattling rams interspersed with shots of rump shaking cheerleaders banging out their dance-grooves to the latest hip-hop that altogether makes high-school basketball look like a Sportscenter dunk-a-th on-slash-music-video. The cheerleader shots were for some reason especially cheesy and bordered on camp, almost as if the film-makers knew they weren't producing a film that accurately portrayed basketball so they collectively figured, "hey, screw it...let's just go whole-hog and turn high-school basketball into the XFL." If the cheerleaders all had huge implants and rolled in mud during the games it wouldn't have been much more ridiculous.
During the shoe-ad commercial gone insane basketball scenes, Coach Carter himself was given short shrift and constantly plays second-fiddle to the goings-on around him. In short, he never has a chance to really COACH. This is probably the film's biggest weakness on the court considering it IS supposed to be about COACH CARTER, after all.
From what I have heard through the grape-vine Ken Carter is a wonderful man and the story of his exploits at Richmond high-school are indeed something special, so it's all-the-more sad that his impact on the lives of these children wasn't given a better realization on the big screen.
Ultimately, Coach Carter has a below-average script that poorly realizes the real-life story combined with sub-par direction, a poor ensemble cast, and extremely unrealistic basketball choreography. In short, if you want to watch a movie about how basketball is really played then watch Hoosiers (or even Blue Chips...*shudder*). If you want to watch a movie about inner city kids succeeding against all odds watch Stand and Deliver. Despite the fact that I went into this movie with high hopes, it is really average at best and certainly not worth full admission price. Thank God I only paid to see a matinée. 5/10.