Overboard

Rating: 3/10 (11 March 2008)

This movie tried to tell a story about one black basketball player's life by trying to put every possible conflict rolled in one. It didn't work. This movie was an eyesore. The music was very good. However, the plot wasn't. The movie was misogynist. The only good women were the immediate relatives. All other women were portrayed as just users and objects. The girl friend of the basketball star (Ray Allen) was not seen sympathetically at all. She was just there for him. The message was she had no hopes and dreams of her own, other than to be around the basketball star.
The part about the basketball star going to the white college and having white women fall all over and have orgasms is nonsense. Black basketball players have to be careful, because there are lots of women out to scream sexual assault, etc. And even the most self-disrespecting women wouldn't just automatically fall all over a black basketball player, even if he were Michael Jordan.
The most ridiculous thing was when Denzel Washington's character returns home and his son doesn't trust him. At first, one thinks "okay, forgive the father". Then, you find out that the father accidentally killed his wife in a fit of rage. Okay, I know lots of people who are mad at their father about things less than that. You can't tell me that a son wouldn't want to have nothing to do with the father after this incident.
Then there was the Hispanic drug dealer. Was he working with the City Of New York? He's driving around the basketball star telling him every sin that is out there. That doesn't sound like a street smart drug dealer, looking out for his interests. That sounds like someone hired to give a young man a lecture.
I am sorry that this film was destroyed by all this. There was a lot of good in the film that was marred by all this. For example, life is very hard. The song by Public Enemy at the end was probably the best way too summarize about the hardship of life in Brooklyn. I think that Spike Lee was trying to be like Scorsese, but not the Scorsese of Mean Streets. Mean Streets was Scorsese's debut masterpiece. He Got Game was more like the mediocre and overrated Taxi Driver. The movie wandered all over the place trying to make a moral point, but failing at every turn.