"More Than A Game" or "LeBron: The Pre-Knicks Years"

Where was I again? Oh, that's right. Basketball. As my #1 fan Cobie Whitten (who, oddly enough, also happens to be the woman who gave birth to me) noted, it's been a while since the last post. Where have I been? Let's just say I ran into a spot of trouble in an unsuccessful bid to cancel my mail. But now I am free, just in time for the new season and the blog posts, they will be a-flowing.

It's a proven fact that my basketball analysis is more insightful than the fat kid from "Two And A Half Men" is obnoxious. No doubt all two of you (hi mom!!!) are foaming at the mouth for predictions and pontifications about the upcoming season, and rest assured, they will come. But today I'm going to mix things up with a movie review. In addition to reigning supreme as the roundball Nostradamus, I also "work" for a "production company" in the entertainment industry. As such, I had the privilege of attending a preview screening of MORE THAN A GAME, a documentary that follows the St. Vincent-St. Mary's high school basketball team. Said team starred a crab-dribbling gent named LeBron at small forward.

Given the facts that MORE THAN A GAME is: A) A documentary and B) A documentary about basketball, a HOOP DREAMS comparison is unavoidable. Really, the two films exist on different planes. HOOP DREAMS is arguably a perfect documentary. It tells an intimate story that exposes a social condition, the roots of which go much deeper than basketball. Most impressively, HOOP DREAMS delivers its message in an authentic and sincere manner, pronouncing the subject and diminishing the filmmakers in a way I haven't seen before or since. Oh, and in response to my 4 year old cousin Julian: Yes I do love HOOP DREAMS so much, and yes I would marry it if it were legal to do so in the state of California.

MORE THAN A GAME (thankfully) doesn't aspire to social commentary. Instead, it focuses on a great team's quest for immortality. The goal--a national title--is as tangible and uplifting as a paint-by-numbers Hollywood drama. Basically, it's The Mighty Ducks II in docu form, and I mean that in the most loving way possible. Despite what you see in the trailer, the ad campaign, and the title of this blog post, MORE THAN A GAME is not the LeBron story. It is very much the St. Vincent-St. Mary's story, a buddy picture about four (and later five) friends who stuck together together in an era where high school hoops has become as mercenary as the NBA. As the film progresses the LeBron mystique becomes ubiquitous, but it's always filtered through the lens of the team: How the fame, the media, the pressure affect the boys and their friendship. For example, when LeBron is declared ineligible for receiving a Wes Unseld jersey--possibly because it was an illegal gift, possibly because of LeBron's poor taste in NBA legends--the biggest threat isn't to LeBron's draft status or his professional reputation. Instead, the focus stays on the team. How can they win the next game, let alone the national title, without their star?

The story plays like a well-structured movie. Seriously, you'd think Coach Joyce read the team Robert McKee before games. The cast includes the Fab 4: LeBron James, Dru Joyce III (aka Little Dru), Sian Cotton and Willie McGee. Four friends from Akron who played for Dru Joyce Jr.'s AAU team all make a pact to stay together through high school. When Little Dru can't make the cut on the local high school powerhouse, all four choose to go to lesser-known St. Vincent-St. Mary--a whitebread Catholic school no doubt filled with kids like Stuart Minkus. From there the movie hits all the right plot points and act breaks: The rise out of obscurity, the hubris-induced loss in the state finals of their junior year, to the redemptive third act where the Fab 5 win the national title in their last game together. There's character drama--between Little Dru and his father, between the team and the media, between the four boys and Romeo Travis, an introverted Forward who joins the team in high school as the Fab 4 become the Fab 5. The final game even features a halftime speech so heartfelt it would make Emilio Estevez shed a tear. Big kudos to the filmmakers for making a believable underdog story out of a team that was the unquestionable favorite in almost every game they played.

What hurts the movie most is the haphazard way it was developed. In a Q&A after the screening, the director explained how MORE THAN A GAME started out as a student film, then morphed into a feature-length documentary that didn't fully come together until years after the the Fab 5 graduated. The film does a great job of providing archival footage, home movies and game tape, but there's a noticeable lack of actual footage shot by the film crew. All the interviews are retrospectives (most filmed within the last year), which help add perspective to the story but definitely sap some of it's emotionality. The filmmakers joined the party late, and it makes the story feel like a nostalgic memory, lacking in urgency and tension.

The editing more than makes up for the conceptual gaffes. The movie clocks in well under 2 hours but still manages to juggle all six characters and neatly tie up the threads. The soundtrack was good, much better than a doc like this should be able to afford; I'd wager my WaMu stock that LeBron and his Executive Producer credit had something to do with that. Lots of effects, lots of highlight clips--it felt like a combination of an AND 1 mix tape and a Sportscenter highlight reel, which perfectly matches the uptempo pace of the film. Check out the trailer to see what I mean.

Of the two other people who were with me, one hates LeBron and the other only watches basketball because she thinks D-Wade is hot. We all loved the movie. So did the rest of the crowd...although the Ohioans (?) in the room didn't seem to appreciate my asking the director if he knew when LeBron planned on making a formal commitment to the Knicks. I guess I won't be welcome in Cleveland any time soon. Too bad.

MORE THAN A GAME. Go see it. I offer the iron-clad 100%-money-back guarantee that it will be better than this.