A New Clip About the Basketball Fantasy “Thunderstruck”
Posted on August 1, 2012 at 11:41 am
Kevin Durant plays himself in this upcoming fantasy about a boy named Brian who wishes he could have Durant’s skills. Brian becomes the star of his high school team, but Durant now has Brian’s skills — or lack of skills, and suddenly he can’t make a shot. When the playoffs approach, Brian has to find a way to work at his own game and get Durant’s back to him and his team.
If you’ve seen the trailer, you know exactly what’s coming here, but there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, you know what’s coming when you combine eggs, flour, sugar, and vanilla to make a cake, and you still enjoy eating it. It is as predictable as, well, you’d expect, for a movie cake made from the Ugly Duckling crossed with Cinderella and a little bit of Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” must be. But appealing performers, a heart-warming story, and some genuine on-screen chemistry make this movie the best romance of 2010 so far.
Queen Latifah plays Leslie Wright, who has a weakness for fixer-uppers. She drives a banged-up car. She buys a house that needs a lot of work. She works in rehabilitation as a physical therapist. She takes in Morgan (Paula Patten of “Precious”), a friend who has no job or family. Leslie is comfortable with who she is and it may be in part the ease she projects on dates that keeps her in the friend zone. She just feels too safe.
Leslie is a big Nets fan. One night, after a game, she sees the team’s star, Scott McKnight (rap star Common) at a gas station trying to figure out how to open his gas tank. They hit it off and he invites her to his birthday party. Leslie brings Morgan, who is going after her dream of being married to a player in the NBA the way Sir Edmund Hillary went after Mount Everest.
It works at first. But when Scott is injured and needs physical therapy, he gets a chance to discover what we’ve known all along, and not just because she is being played by the movie’s star and producer, that Leslie is a very special woman. The plot has the standard ups and downs but an always-likable cast keeps us rooting for Scott and Leslie to realize what we’ve known from the gas station — that they are just right. Common is not an actor, but like most musical performers he has superb timing and the on-screen confidence to let us see Scott thinking. It is his willingness to be quiet on screen that establishes Scott as a sincere and decent man who loves to play basketball and is committed to his team but never lets the glamor go to his head. He has some moves in the basketball scenes and a bunch of real-life athletes show up to give the game scenes some authenticity and make Common’s acting skills look Oscar-worthy by comparison. The lovely Pam Grier and Phylicia Rashad play the moms and both create real characters who are warm, smart, strong, and loving.
Queen Latifah is also completely at ease on screen and she is utterly endearing as Leslie, a woman who knows who she is and just wants someone who can understand how much she has to give. The film doesn’t think it needs to start with the couple disliking each other; it is captivating that Leslie and Scott instantly like each other as friends. The connection is so strong that we look forward to seeing them discover it for themselves. When they sit down together at a piano, we know they will be in tune. And knowing it only adds to our pleasure in watching it unfold.
Now that most people’s NCAA brackets are blown up and they’re getting ready to enjoy the final game, it might be a good time to take another look at some fictional college basketball teams in the movies.
1. The Absent Minded Professor Fred MacMurray plays a college professor whose accidental invention of “flubber” (“flying rubber”) gives the school’s basketball team some extra bounce.
2. Tall Story Jane Fonda’s first movie has her co-starring with Anthony Perkins (before “Psycho”) in the story of a basketball star thrown off his game by the attentions of a determined young woman.
3. Glory Road This is the true story of coach Don Haskins (Josh Lucas), who played the first all-black team in the NCAA in 1965 at Texas Western college (now University of Texas at El Paso). Lucas and Derek Luke as one of his players give beautiful performances in this stirring film.
4. Blue Chips stars Nick Nolte in a story of corruption in college recruiting, written by Ron Shelton of “White Men Can’t Jump” and “Bull Durham.”
5. “The Air Up There” A gentler college recruiting story has Kevin Bacon traveling to Africa to persuade the son of a tribal leader who has “the hang time of a helium balloon” to join his team.
The athletes have worked harder than they ever imagined, pushing themselves to the limits of their endurance. They’ve learned how to run faster and hit, kick, or shoot harder. They’ve watched tape of the other team, the champions, the ones who seem unbeatable. They’ve learned that there is no “I” in “team,” and then they learned it again. And then comes that moment when they feel that they have nothing left. It is time for some encouragement and motivation. They need some words that can remind the players that what they are doing matters, that it is worth stretching their souls and bodies to the limit, that this is a defining moment that will tell them and everyone who knows them and everyone who will ever know them who they are. They need to know that it is not about scoring or medals or applause; it is about courage, determination, loyalty, and knowing you have given your entire heart to something. That is when they need a great coach.
Movie coaches, most of them real-life characters, have provided some of the most memorable moments in film history, inspiring us in the audience as they inspire the athletes on screen. And, in our own private, faint-hearted moments, we often think back on those “Win one for the Gipper” speeches for our own sense of meaning, purpose, and confidence. When you feel as though you can use a pep talk, these coaches are always available on DVD.
12. A League of Their Own Sometimes the coach is the one who needs some inspiration. In this movie, Tom Hanks is a former baseball player who is bitter following an injury. He has a drinking problem, but his former fame gets him a position as the coach in an all-female league, created to keep the fans happy while the male players were fighting in World War II. It is the heart, dedication, and ability of the players that inspires him to become the coach they need. Quote: “There’s no crying in baseball!”
11. Personal Best Scott Glenn plays the coach of women training for the Olympics. In one memorable scene, he has a monologue as he watches one of his athletes run around a track, and shows his frustration on both of their behalfs at the second-class treatment of women athletes and and his fierce pride in watching her beat a man. Quote: “The high jump is a masochist’s event–it always ends on failure.”
10. Knute Rockne All American The legendary Notre Dame coach was an innovator who changed the game of football by popularizing the forward pass and set many records including five undefeated seasons. Pat O’Brien plays Rockne in this film, and Ronald Reagan plans the player whose death inspired the most famous locker room speech in history. Quote: ” I’m going to tell you something I’ve kept to myself for years — None of you ever knew George Gipp. It was long before your time. But you know what a tradition he is at Notre Dame…And the last thing he said to me — “Rock,” he said — “sometime, when the team is up against it — and the breaks are beating the boys — tell them to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper.”
9. Remember the Titans When an Alexandria, Virginia school was integrated for the first time, it wasn’t just the teammates who had to learn to work together. Coach Boone (Denzel Washington) and Coach Yoast (Will Patton) had to become a team as well. This true story of their first team and its undefeated season, and if you plan to watch, bring a handkerchief. Maybe two. Quote: “In Greek mythology, the Titans were greater even than the gods. They ruled their universe with absolute power. Well that football field out there, that’s our universe. Let’s rule it like Titans.”
8. Coach Carter The great thing about Coach Carter is that after he turns his rag-tag players into a disciplined, winning team, he benches them. Samuel L. Jackson plays real-life coach Ken Carter, who benched the team and locked the gym to insist that his team members could not play unless they did their schoolwork and got good grades. Quote: “You really need to consider the message you’re sending this boys by ending the lockout. It’s the same message that we as a culture send to our professional athletes; and that is that they are above the law. If these boys cannot honor the simple rules of a basketball contract, how long do you think it will be before they’re out there breaking the law?”
7. Glory Road Josh Lucas plays real-life coach Texas Western Don Haskins, who coached the first NCAA basketball team with an all-black starting line-up in 1966. Haskins did not intend to be a civil rights pioneer. He just wanted the best players he could find. And in that era, there were plenty of black basketball players who were not getting offers from anyone else. So Haskins put together a team with a lot of talent and a lot of passion for the game, and then he showed them how to be better players and an even better team than they had ever imagined. Quote: “Your dignity’s inside you. Nobody can take something away from you you don’t give them.”
6. Miracle And don’t miss the documentary: Do You Believe in Miracles? The Story of the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team. It’s still referred to as the “Miracle on Ice.” No one thought the American hockey players had a chance against the Soviet team in the 1980 Olympics. The Americans were amateurs from different teams. The Soviets were the world champions. The David and Goliath game that resulted was voted the number one international game in hockey history on the 100th anniversary of the game. The American team beat the Soviets because they had coach Herb Brooks, played here by Kurt Russell. Brooks said he won because he picked “not the best players but the right players.” Quote: “Great moments… are born from great opportunity. And that’s what you have here, tonight, boys. That’s what you’ve earned here tonight. One game. If we played ’em ten times, they might win nine. But not this game. Not tonight.”
5. Friday Night Lights Before the television show, there was a book and there was this movie, with Billy Bob Thornton as coach Gary Gaines. In small-town Texas, everyone in town goes to the high school football games, everyone thinks they know what the coach should be doing, and every player knows that he may never do anything again that matters to as many people as winning the season. Quote: “Being perfect means going onto the field knowing that you did everything you could have done, with clear eyes, love in your heart, joy in your heart.”
4. Hoosiers Gene Hackman plays Norman Dale, who must battle his own demons to be the coach his high school basketball team deserves in this quietly powerful film inspired by the real-life story of the small-town team that took the Indiana state championship in 1951. Quote: “These six individuals have made a choice to work, a choice to sacrifice, to put themselves on the line 23 nights for the next 4 months, to represent you, this high school. That kind of commitment and effort deserves and demands your respect. This is your team.”
3. Chariots of Fire A competitor in the 1924 Olympics took the unusual step of seeking a coach, considered vaguely unsporting in those days of the gentleman athlete. And the coach, Sam Mussabini (Ian Holm) was an unconventional choice. So overcome he cannot bear to watch the race, Mussabini sits in his hotel room. When the word comes in that his runner has won, he quietly punches out the crown of his straw hat. Quote: “A short sprint is run on nerves.”
2. Stick It (and also see Bridges as a coach in Surf’s Up) Jeff Bridges is so natural as the coach of girl gymnasts in “Stick It” and a surfing penguin in “Surf’s Up” that if feels like he was born to play the perfect disciplinarian/mentor/source of inspiration. In the underrated “Stick It,” his toughest challenge is a gifted athlete who quit gymnastics and is then sentenced to compete again to stay out of juvenile detention. He has to teach her to trust him before he can begin to coach her. Quote: “This isn’t the real world. This is my world. You don’t have to like me or like it here, but you do have to respect it.”
1. The Heart of the Game Bill Resler is a tax law professor who agrees to coach a girls’ high school basketball team in this spellbinding and documentary about the quintessentially American themes: race, gender, class, lawsuits, heart, skill, optimism, despair, setbacks, and triumph. Unforgettable. Quote: “Devour the moose!”