The cheap and cheerful effect is felt mainly in the script, which allows for
no real character development and no development of themes. The writers knew
they had to have their Jordan
be competitive, learn teamwork and other things that are well known – so these
things are put in in one or two scenes and then never really run through the
character as a trait in the way it should have been. Outside of this there is
nothing and all the actors just feel like they are reading lines and playing
whatever character is easiest to do. Some have been very harsh on Jace but,
having seen him do good work with a good character on The Shield, I can't help
but feel sorry for him because the script gives him nothing to work with apart
from basic emotions and actions. Support is no better; Hudson just plays it affable and warm, Givens
has two notes to hit and just about does them. The very low budget is shown in
the actual production – nobody wanted to pay out cash to use the NBA logos and
such so the strips simply have the words "Chicago Bulls" written on
it and the NBA logo is just a wiggley line! The game action would have struck
me as being pretty damn important but it is sorely lacking; normally we see the
celebrations after a win (very poor atmosphere) but the one or two shots we see
in the whole film are filmed so that we assume it goes in so that Jace doesn't
have to make the shot to get the take to count! Overall this is a worthy
subject but a terrible film. It is cheap, poorly written, the characters are
paper-thin and the game action is so lame as to make you wonder why they
bothered with it at all. There is a fascinating character piece within this
story and there are plenty of books that tell it reasonably well but this film
is certainly not able to do anything with it. In fairness it is no worse than
all the melodramatic nonsense clogging up daytime television but the fact that
we all know the real story (and know it much better than this told it) means
that this is a total waste of time.
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