Shooting Stars – Review
115 Minutes, Rated PG-13
Written by Frank E. Flowers,Tony Rettenmaier, and Juel Taylor
Directed by Chris Robinson
**NOTE: this post may be updated with audio if we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, you can read Mark’s review below. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
Synopsis:
A look at the young life of basketball star LeBron James. Feature film adaptation of LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger’s book ‘Shooting Stars’.
Shooting Stars chronicles the early life and rise to basketball prominence of one Lebron James. Beginning with his time on the titular team, James is surrounded by his 3 friends, the self-styled “Fab Four,” and they come to dominate until it’s time to enter high school, when they make the fateful choice to not attend the predominantly black prep school expecting them, but which will break them up on Varsity and JV squads, but the Catholic school which will allow them to play together.
I am not a Lebron James fan; let’s just get that out of the way up front.
That said, Shooting Stars is, if accurate, one of the most theatrically coincidental stories of all time. All the tropes: boyhood friends, new coach, riding the bench, dramatic exposure to the “big time,” and the inevitable elevation of one of those friends above the others, straining their friendship, the downfall, and the inevitable undermining of the superstar.
The resulting fairy-tale ending of the film completes the bingo card.
Look, I’m not saying Lebron James didn’t live a completely enchanted basketball life.
But man, this film sure does check all the boxes.
It also, coincidentally, released just as James was on the verge of setting the NBA all-time scoring record and is approaching retirement.
But whatever.
As a bio-pic, I can’t attest to its accuracy, but as a film…
…it’s no Hoosiers.
But if you’re a Lebron fan, you’ll enjoy it. It’s not like it’s a bad film, but we’ve literally seen everything in it before, more than once.
And better.
Shooting Stars is now streaming on Peacock and stars Wood Harris, Marquis “Mookie” Cook, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalie Paul, Algee Smith, and Dermot Mulroney, Khalil Everage, Sterling “Scoot” Henderson, Katlyn Nichol, and Avery S. Wills, Jr.
And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.
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