Hoop Dreams

I love this movie. Back in 98 I had the unexpected pleasure of catching it on PBS. At first I casually watched it, having heard of it upon its release a few years earlier. Not too far into the three hour running time, I found myself going from casual onlooker to absolutely hooked. The story is amazing in its scope. Four years of high school and some brief college material are documented here. We hop on board the lives of two high school basketball stars from Chicago, all but consumed with the desire to play in the NBA. Both boys are similar in some ways, and yet very different. As their story unfolds, you become very aware at how real this story is for many young athletes. All Hollywood clichés are left in the dust and the truth only a documentary can muster pulls us along for what seems like a film that is strangely too short. Three hours have never gone by so quick. Your heart will cheer, break, and then cheer again for these two great kids as they struggle with their dreams of reaching the ultimate level, as well as their struggle to just find a way through their daily lives. I won't do you the disservice of giving away anything. Just sit down and watch a great movie, and find out for yourself. Good Stuff! 10/10

"Hoop Dreams" follows two Chicago teens, Arthur Agee and William Gates, for 5 years. Both hope to eventually make it to the NBA to play basketball but their more immediate goals are to receive scholarships to top basketball colleges. In the history of documentaries, "Hoop Dreams" is super-important and it helped usher in a newer style and scope of documentaries (such as the many excellent films by ESPN). I do appreciate that. However, after I watched it, I found myself underwhelmed. After all, the film has a current score of 8.3--and that is incredibly high. So, I think I found my expectations were just too high. Additionally, and I know this will perhaps sound mean, but I really didn't find myself that connected with the characters. I was hoping they'd get to live their dreams...but why should I pull for them as opposed to any other young wannabes?

Engrossing documentary about two inner city kids and their struggles to make it into professional basketball. "Hoop Dreams" made a big splash when it was released in 1994, and there was a big controversy around Academy Award time when it was deemed ineligible in the Best Documentary category. It likely would have won had it been nominated, and it ranks right up there among some of the best documentaries of all time. This is mostly due to how engrossing the storytelling is. You forget you're not watching a fictional film, which just supports the claim that truth can be more compelling than fiction. You don't have to be a fan of basketball to enjoy this movie. Grade: A

When I first moved to England in the mid-nineties, I took advantage of living in a city and having an art cinema near me for the first time ever. As a result I saw many things that I wouldn't have otherwise seen and Hoop Dreams was one of those things. At the time it was getting a lot of buzz about it being a rare film about real life and it also interested me as I had just started getting into basketball as well. Since then the film has become one of those films that is generally well remembered but not seen very often (at least it is in the UK). I eventually managed to get hold of it again recently (again thanks to some of the very kind users on IMDb) and I was looking forward to watching it again. Unfortunately this also meant appraising it again and it must be said that, watching with modern eyes almost 15 years from its release (and longer since it started being made) it doesn't stand up as well as I would have liked. As a rider on this it must be said that Hoop Dreams still has value considering what it is and when it was made. Nowadays we are used to every other programme being some sort of real-life fly-on-the-wall programme, simply because they are popular and cheap to make. However these differ from the ambition here, which is to chart the progress of two boys looking to basketball as their way to a better life – a project that spread over many years with many hundreds and hundreds of hours of video to edit down (and accordingly the film did get the Oscar for editing). So what we are left with is a film that does a solid job of telling these two stories and marks itself as a bit of a modern milestone in reality cinema. It must be noted though that being an important film in terms of what it does is not the same as it being a really good film. The problem is that it doesn't totally manage to tell the story in a way that engages on a personal level and inform on a more general basis – both of which appear to have been aims. The film is solid when it comes to the focus on the two boys but the problem is that, as individuals, the film doesn't make them particularly engaging people for the audience to care about and I didn't get a lot of drama from their respective journeys. OK they were interesting enough and also pulled together in quite a succinct manner but it never gave me much of a reason to really be held by the tale. Surprisingly bigger events in their lives are frequently just mentioned by the narrator (the father getting on and then off crack is dealt with in one line). Of course this is why it is important for a larger message to be clear and, in the case of Hoop Dreams, the bigger picture is the reality of the "making it out the ghetto via basketball" dream and the limited options to those who do not have this. In this regard the film doesn't achieve it because it is too tightly focused on the two boys and their families. There isn't a feel of the scale of this, of the challenges facing those who don't make it, of the desperation to make it and so on. This is a real shame because it could have made a good film into a great film and were the film made today one does think that it would be a pre-requisite. The dated presentation doesn't help – obviously visually it is of the time it was made but I remember the cheesy sax music as horrid and time has only made it worse. There is no doubt that the scale and aims of Hoop Dreams and its cinematic success makes it an important part of modern reality cinema – it is just that the film isn't as good to watch as its reputation deserves. The editing is good but the structure lacks a personal hook and doesn't manage to deliver much in terms of the bigger picture. It is still worth seeing and it is "good" but it is hard to understand why so many people lavish praise on it without pointing out its many faults.

"Hoop Dreams" brilliantly follows multiple parallel stories, bringing the viewer into the lives of two families of inner-city kids looking for a chance at the "big time", their ticket out of the ghetto. Although the main focus is on William Gates and Arthur Agee, their "supporting cast" is equally enthralling. From William's jaded brother Curtis, sublimating his own basketball aspirations to the reality of his blue-collar mailroom job, to Arthur's indomitable mom Sheila, doing the impossible every day as she keeps her troubled family together, there are a thousand reasons to cheer, laugh, cry, and rage packed throughout this amazing, inspirational, cautionary documentary. By examining not only the players but also their families and environments, we are given a clearer view of their aspirations and motivations, what they plan to achieve and what they wish to avoid. I will not summarize or elaborate further. If you have not seen this movie, put it on the short list. 9/10.

After reading the comments about "Hoop Dreams" I feel that I must help to set the record straight. Though a few of the reviewers saw this film correctly, the vast majority see this film as a basketball movie. It is not. This is a film about poor and impressionable children who are promised a better life by people who seek only to exploit them. Form the opening seen where the fat Artful Dodger-like recruiter is watching 14 year old boys play basketball and trying to entice them to attend the same prep-school as Isaiah Thomas, to the moment when Arthur is expelled because he cannot pay his tuition, we see how savagely exploited these poor children are. They have been reduced to work-horses by white America, promised a better life if they compete on the modern-day gladiatorial stage. These kids will never make the big show, and they will never escape the ghetto. They will perform like circus clowns until they no longer have the ability to excite us. This is modern-day slavery and apartheid on display in the USA, and some of you folks out there have the nerve to criticize these desperately poor families for accepting a welfare check. Shame on you for perpetuating such exploitation. This film is not about basketball. This film is about the continuing development of a minority underclass in this country, and the fact that we all promote it with our love for gladiators, and our Dickensian willingness to exploit children to fulfill our gluttonous desires. This is a film with heroes and villians. If you think its just a heartwarming story about kids playing basketball, then you are one of the villians.

A film that captures dreams, disappointment and family life. How we repeat the same mistakes, and forgive those we love. Basketball may be a boring sport, but this is excellent. Not quite in the same league as "Bowling For Columbine" and "One Day In September", but still another in the long line of powerful documentary films over the past 10 years.

At three hours, this is a long but interesting documentary about two Chicago-area high school basketball stars, William Gates and Arthur Agee, who try to make something from their basketball talents. Both athletes, of course, dream of becoming pro players some day. There are hundreds of similar tales each season - of great players, mostly black - who don't make it through college or even to college despite their enormous talents and one can get idea of some of the obstacles by watching these two guys. Gates is recruited by St. Joe's, a powerhouse Catholic School which claims Isaiah Thmas as it most famous cage alumnus. There, Gates plays for a typically gung-ho coach and has a lot of ups and downs, both on and off the court. However, he's a lot more mature than the other subject of the documentary: Agee. Agee also is recruited by the private school but can't pay the tuition and is kicked out in his sophomore year. He then returns to his neighborhood public school and eventually becomes a star. Gates graduates and goes on to Marquette while Agee attends a junior college. From that point, a summary at the end of the film brings you up-to-date on what happened to the kids. Thus, almost all of the three hours is devoted to these kids form junior high through high school. The families and friends of these athletes are interesting and the film really documents the different lifestyles between blacks and whites in the USA. It's a fascinating picture for people of any race. For non-blacks, it shows them a window into a whole different world. This film is obviously not just to highlight basketball players but to show life as it exists with a lot of poor black families: the good and the bad, the achievements and the big mistakes. I enjoyed it just as much the second time as the first. It's one of the better documentaries I've ever seen, so don't let the length of it discourage you.

"Basketball is a ticket out of ghetto." (William Gates) "... nobody cares about you. You're a black, you're a young male... The only reason why you're here [Nike training camp] is so you can make their team win. And if the team wins these schools get a lot of money." (Spike Lee) These phrases, which have persisted as common knowledge among the African-American community during last several decades, have become familiar to the non-hyphenated Americans in the 90s, thanks to the films such as Boyz N the Hood and He Got Game. Among them, Hoop Dreams, a documentary that follows two black youths during a five-year period, is the most objective and the most quiet, but the most powerful statement to represent the disadvantaged youth in urban America. The film reveals the pattern they follow. Being deluded by the luxurious surface of pro sports, they neglect education and then ending up going nowhere. The community suffers the vicious cycle and their feelings that the system exploits them remain. Kudos to the filmmakers for their insane amount of work. They must have gone through numerous negotiations to attend and film various scenes, such as family's private events, classrooms, academic counseling, recruiting sessions with college coaches, and surgery operation rooms.

"Hoop Dreams" is a film about real life, because that is what it's exactly about, real life. I feel that I must put a stronger emphasis on the word "real" to get my point across. This isn't some hokey, Hollywood drama about living out a dream, but is about two aspiring young athletes rising out of the dredges of the Chicago ghetto life and into the flash and glitter of the NBA. Though I'm not a hardcore sports fan, nor am I really into movies about sports, but I really admire basketball, as I feel it has a kind of grace and natural balance that's lacking in most other sports this vigorous. That is why I like some of the film's exhilarating on-court action that is interspersed evenly with the human drama. Directed by Steve James and produced by Frederick Marx and Peter Gilbert, "Hoop Dreams" originally began as a 30-minute documentary about rising ballplayers, but the filmmakers quickly saw that 30 minutes was just too narrow a scope for their story. This realization came when they witnessed two teens, William Gates and Arthur Agee, as they both try to join the NBA, much like their idol Isiah Thomas. In total, 250+ hours of footage was gathered over the course of a five-year period and then edited into an engaging 171-minute documentary, following the two teens (from ages 14-18), as they attend expensive Catholic schools, go through the rigorous on-court training, meet the demands of their coaches, and live out their dreams. (Director Spike Lee also appears at a training camp and gives some of the aspiring players some less-than-inspiring advice about what their skills mean to the people at the top of the ladder.) We watch as their poignant, real-life struggles unfold on the screen, and watch as time after time they get stonewalled by the system of bureaucracy and racism that's meant to be especially hard on two young black boys from the ghetto. They have difficulty with making decent grades, financial issues, preparing for the ACT, sports-related injuries, and must contend with problems at home as well, including trouble with family matters (Arthur's relationship with his father is especially touching and sad; William welcomes a new addition to his family while still in high school). For years, success stories, such as "Hoop Dreams," have dominated Hollywood cinema and have won over legions of audiences, but we've never seen anything like this. Gates and Agee are both bright-eyed and ambitious that they're embarking on something that's historically significant to their lives and community. This is the best movie about basketball and reality I've seen yet because of the simple fact that it's real; no scripts, no phony Hollywood theatrics, just "real" action, drama, and emotions. 10/10