ViewGuide

Created Mar 07, 2013 10:53PM PST • Edited May 21, 2023 08:54AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Spike Lee’s He Got Game serves as an elegy for basketball in America – its cultural transcendence, but also the avariciousness at the upper reaches of the hoops industry. The movie trawls through agents, leeches, homeboys and groupies on the make, each hoping to ride a prime-time player to Easy Street.

   It also stoops to conquer African-American family dysfunction. No one ever said Spike wasn’t ambitious.

   It’s first and foremost a basketball movie however, and not quite secondarily a Denzel Washington vehicle. Amongst its revelations is that Denzel’s got game himself, as his 1on1 against NBA great Ray Allen at the end of the movie proves. He’s also a monumentally charismatic moviestar, never more so than as Jake Shuttlesworth, a Father who has sinned greatly yet still commands affection from his family and from us.

   He Got Game is a great basketball movie, but is less about the game itself than the celebrity and power that surround big time hoops. Thus it’s not a traditional sports movie. Heck there’s not even a big game in it, notwithstanding a father-son 1on1.

   Still it illuminates an important thread of American society, especially since Michael Jordan elevated basketball stardom to new levels in the 80s. Nike and ESPN transformed hoops heroes into transcendent media stars, making the hunt for the next big star an industry unto itself, with countless kids experiencing the thrill and letdowns of stardom just out of reach. He Got Game dramatizes this Hoop Dreams come true, complete with lots of backstabbing along the way.

   Most basketball fans have already seen He Got Game, though I considered it a mid-season treat to rescreen it a decade and a half after its premiere. Those interested in great family drama, the African-American experience and just plain Denzel fans owe it to themselves to view it too, basketball be damned.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Denzel Washington gave one of his iconic performances as the father of Ray Allen’s Jesus Shuttlesworth. His Jake Shuttlesworth is a mostly good man, yet with a taste for the bottle that he doesn’t try to put behind, notwithstanding the tragic acts alcohol led him to commit. And yet we don’t hate him, a testament to our favorite moviestar’s innate charisma and relatability, even for those of us in radically different circumstances from a black man in the projects. Speaking of a guy who’s got game, Denzel handles himself impressively on the court, even going against Ray Allen, the future Hall of Famer. Truth.

   Ray Allen is quietly effective as a schoolboy phenom of the magnitude that LeBron James would assume a couple of years after the movie came out. Ironically, Allen is now James’ teammate on the Miami Heat. Plus it doesn’t hurt that he looks and hoops like the authentic basketball demigod that he is.

   Their supporting cast is exceptionally strong. First the phenom’s inner circle:

   • Lonette McKee as his sainted Mother.
   • Zelda Harris as his whip-smart little sister.
   • Rosario Dawson as his conniving girlfriend Lala. Conniving yes, but gorgeously fresh-faced, as Dawson was 19 at the time.
   • Hill Harper as his cousin and shrimpy point guard.
   • Bill Nunn & Michele Shay as his Uncle & Aunt and sometime guardians.
   • Arthur J. Nascarella as his high school coach.
   • Travis Best, Walter McCarty and John Wallace as his teammates, who do a fun video together.

   Then the interlopers:

   • Jim Brown as a hard-as-nails Detective. Yes, THE Jim Brown.
   • Ned Beatty as a Prison Warden carrying water for the Governor.
   • Roger Guenveur Smith as “Big Time Willie,” local celebrity fixer.
   • Al Palagonia as a big time sports agent.
   • Rick Fox as a college basketball star and BMOC.
   • John Turturro as a major college coach who is recruiting the phenom.

   Finally, Milla Jovovich as a sweethearted hooker and Thomas Jefferson Byrd as her pimp enliven Denzel’s brief time out of the joint.

   Then there are the “Himself” cameos, including Dean Smith, Lute Olson, John Chaney, John Thompson, Roy Williams, Nolan Richardson, Denny Crum, George Karl, Jim Boeheim, Rick Pitino, Bobby Cremins, Dick Vitale, Bill Walton, Shaquille O’Neal, Reggie Miller, Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen and Robin Roberts (then of ESPN). And Michael Jordan, then still reigning on the court. Most of those coaches are now retired, but were the top men at the top NCAA programs in ’98.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Spike Lee starts his film with a white boy shooting hoops somewhere out in Birdland, Larry Bird-land. Only later does he move into the inner-city home of black ballers. He also splits the soundtrack between the very white Aaron Copland and the very black Public Enemy. Thus he creates a film that captures the black and white cultural transcendence of basketball in America.

    Spike’s direction is impressively naturalistic, its tarted-up story notwithstanding, making it easy to relate to and even to love. Most importantly, he makes his points without being too pedantic.

    • The overwhelming influence of ESPN, as typified by early Sportscenter
    • The deification of basketball and the strength of African-American men in the form of Jesus Shuttlesworth
    • The corrupting influence of money on poor athletes, starting while they are schoolboys for the biggest stars
    • The corrupting influences of stardom on those same athletes, from groupies to drugs to grades to, well, to just about everything

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Great 4.0

    Spike sure knows how to name his characters.

13. Music Perfect 5.0

    Aaron Copland and Public Enemy – brilliant choices for music, the former reverential and uplifting, the latter streetwise and pulsing.

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.8

    He Got Game visualizes all the corrupting influences surrounding ghetto superstars – boobs and booze especially. The language is one part locker-room, one part hip-hop. F-bombs, the N-word and the P-word are all part of the lingo. Those easily offended, especially women, should steer clear.

17. Sex Erotic 3.1

18. Violence Fierce 1.6

19. Rudeness Nasty 3.7

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    He Got Game remains relevant, being both of its world and anticipating its development.

    For instance, it came out when LeBron James was 14. Two years later King James would lead his high school to the Ohio state championship, becoming the embodiment of He Got Game’s fictional Jesus Shuttlesworth.

    Note also how Denzel’s Father character goes a bit too far in pushing his gifted son, just as LeBron’s high school coach would do to his son, as documented in More Than A Game.

    Finally, Spike assigned the name of Lala to Jesus Shuttlesworth’s girlfriend. Carmelo Anthony, another real life basketball savior, married La La Vazquez six years later.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.5

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0