Good Performances Outweigh No-So-Good Everything Else

Rating: 6/10 (27 November 2002)

Some of our finest performers (Gene Hackman, Barbara Hershey, Dennis Hopper) are terrific here but David Anspaugh's high school basketball Cinderella story works more like a industrial motivational film promoting teamwork, which it does all the way up to its conclusion--and then it abandons the concept in favor of the individual heroics that's been chastised throughout. Anspaugh tries to cloak his rah-rah enthusiasm by setting his story in 1951 rural Indiana (it's based on a true story about the 1954 Milan Indians, the smallest Indiana school to ever win the state championship), projecting a more innocent time so that this type of story can be conferred the status of legend. But the contemporary (for 1986--it's very dated today) synthesized score by Jerry Goldsmith gives it away and Angelo Pizzo's misguided screenplay doesn't trust its own premise, leaving the viewer confused and a little skeptical. Still, there's plenty to admire in the committed performances by the leads: regardless of the spacy script, they insist on delivering top-notch work, even though the filmmakers don't deserve it.