Hoopla

Rating: Null/10 (1 April 2002)

Isn't diversity wonderful? Isn't it nice to know that there are all kinds of people in this world, each with different tastes and standards for what pleases them? I think so. So far every single reviewer on the IMDB has absolutely loved this movie. They all think it is an amazing feel-good masterpiece. Not one killjoy has yet to show up and suggest that it is anything short of awesome. Well, ta-daaa, here I am. I wouldn't want to sit through this movie again for anything less than a hundred bucks. Gene Hackman is a new coach in town and for no logical reason everyone treats him like he is a leper out to blow up the school and slaughter the livestock. Okay, he overcomes all this illogical hatred and manages to shape his understaffed basketball team into a unit that will even compete for the Indiana State Championship! High School basketball is big in Indiana in 1951. 79 reporters are outside the locker room fighting to talk to the coach long before they even get to the finals! The music is overbearing and awful. I can't even describe it. Every time they try to show us basketball action they have to include a rock/pop/muzak concert that drowns out everything. I thought the basketball scenes were totally unconvincing. I never got the sense that I was watching game action, only actors. One teenager is supposed to be the greatest basketball player in the state but he won't play anymore because his father died. That's half the plot in the movie, getting this pouting prima Donna to play. What's so great about his game? He's got a good jump shot with very little elevation on his jump. Big deal. That's ALL he's got, and with editing, there are 79,000 teen-agers in Rhode Island that can make 99% of their jump shots. The ending was a predictable as the sunrise in Tahiti and as usual, was a rip-off of THE LONGEST YARD. That's the film that initiated the slow-mo final play that all the others have copied. And YARD had a dynamite story to go along with it, unlike the snooze-plot in HOOSIERS. Hackman is way too old to be making out with Barbara Hershey. It's the standard Hollywood casting nonsense. Of course, they hate each other when they first meet. I immediately knew they'd be necking before this flick was out. That's always the dead giveaway. I wish that reviewers would speak for themselves in their reviews. Just tell me what YOU think and we can compare notes accordingly. But please stop insisting that, `you will absolutely love this movie.' You don't know me. I did not like this move. My wife loved it. All of the others on this board loved it. And by the way, it IS fiction. The tiniest school in the state does not go on to the state championships with an undermanned squad to boot. I did like one thing. Dennis Hopper was excellent and his role as the boozer battling his problem was touching and effective. But the feel-good sports story was dopey.