Parts Hoosiers, Dead Poets Society and Lean on Me

Rating: 6/10 (25 January 2005)

Parts Hoosiers, part Dead Poet's Society and part Lean on Me, Samuel L. Jackson stars as high school basketball coach Ken Carter in the new MTV/Paramount release, Coach Carter.
Inspired by a true story, Ken Carter was responsible for turning around the basketball athletic program at Richmond High School by less than conventional methods. Carters' philosophy was that education was far more important than any athletic achievement and he had each of the team members sign a contract that agrees to some significant terms. Included in the personal agreements were to maintain a 2.3 grade point average, to attend every class and sit in the front row and to wear a jacket and tie on game days. In return, the players get the benefit of his coaching tutelage and the use of a gym facility for their training regiment.
Getting the lowly Richmond team to work as a team would be a tougher job than expected. With a 4-20 something record the year previous, there was much room for improvement and the teenage kids were acting like, well, teenagers when given their first dose of authority. But things do get off to a rousing start until coach gets their progress reports from the teaching faculty and shuts down the gym forfeiting two matches 16 games into the successful season.
This caused quite an uproar in the community and gave Carter some media attention back in 1999. Perceived as taking away the highlight of an adolescent's school memory while striking a blow to an incredible turnaround in achievement, parents convened in a town-hall type meeting to vote on the future of the imposed lockout and ultimately the future of coach Carter. The result can all be determined if you have seen any of the three movies I listed in the opening paragraph, and the team does get to play at least one more memorable game towards their legacy.
Coach Carter comes from a very short line of good basketball films. In fact, this side of professional hockey, there is not much other than 1986's Hoosiers and Spike Lee's He Got Game there is not much to cheer about (sorry Blue Chips). However, Coach Carter does prove to be inspirational and the basketball game footage and camera angles are maybe the best ever filmed to represent the fast paced sport.
Samuel L. Jackson does his best Samuel L. Jackson impression and is believable as a coach that would put in the time and energy into a thankless ($1,500/year thankless) coaching position. The kids too also pull off just enough to make the strong glide down court without feeling as if we are traveling towards an expected conclusion.
There were some liberties taken that are truly evident. The fact that two high school teams can score 14 points between them with less than two minutes left in the game yet only get 70-odds for the entire contest was a bit hard to believe (but not impossible so I am told).
But the major problem with Coach Carter was the running time. Clocking in at an unnecessary 136 minutes, there are far too many musical montages of Carter thinking alone in the gym or the team walking through the school halls. It was as if MTV films was trying to squeeze a double disc CD complication out of the experience, and I quite frankly could have cared less for these non-story moving moments.
So too could the team members quitting the team ended up on the cutting room floor. They walk away only to come back only to walk away again. Surely, some amalgamation of the events could have been conjured to keep things on a forwards progress.
But these are small nitpicks for what is overall a very enjoyable and moving experience. Coach Carter does deliver the goods and even though your bum might take time to forgive you for shuffling in your seat for two plus hours, at least the final result is a film that kids and parents alike can enjoy and hopefully draw inspiration from. And that my friends is a slam dunk.
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