The intrusive narration, from hip hopper Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, offers little sense of real lives unfolding, more of a way being paved to an, admittedly tense, all-American triumph-over-adversity climax.
Comment
12/30/06
The Heart of the Game (2006)
86 %
Reviews Counted: 90 Fresh: 77 Rotten:13 Average Rating: 7.4/10
Consensus:
This group of high school girls and their eccentric basketball coach easily win your heart with their unusual humanity and dynamism.
Runtime: 1 hr 43 mins
Synopsis: "Sink your teeth in their necks! Draw blood!" is the rallying cry of the Roosevelt Roughriders girls' basketball team. Imagining themselves as a pack of wolves, the girls tear into opposing teams and stand together as warriors both on and off the court. When Seattle filmmaker Ward... [More]
Genre: Sports/Recreation
Reviews
Top Critic
Boredom and irritation set in early with this shallow, parochial and blandly celebratory documentary about a US high-school girls' basketball team, of frankly limited interest to non-US audiences.
12/30/06
Top Critic
It's packed with left-field twists and turns and culminates in a genuinely nail-biting match where old rivalries come to a head. In the end, it's all you can do not to stand up and cheer.
12/30/06
Top Critic
It shifts focus too often to hang together as an in-depth portrait of either the unconventional coach or his headstrong star player.
12/30/06
Top Critic
A nice little documentary that proves that nice guys, and nice girls, don't always finish last.
09/01/07
Serrill does a good job of grounding the film with the conventions to suck you in and make the team likeable. But then the politics and real stories emerge, which makes the film truly stand apart from the crowd.
04/19/07
[The film] covers seven years and touches on some of the same social issues that gave Hoop Dreams its epic sweep, yet Serrill fails to treat any of them adequately, and the narrative loses its shape as events unfold.
03/26/07
...a compelling and insightful glimpse into the convergence of perpetual teenage issues with modern high school athletics, with the entertainment value extending far beyond basketball fans.
08/31/06
Who needs faux melodramatic school sports stories when a real-life documentary like Heart of the Game shows it in living, breathing heart-wrenching color?
08/24/06
Emotional, uplifting, vexing and infuriating, it's the first basketball documentary worthy of being compared to 1994's Hoop Dreams.
08/18/06
A filmmaker of great patience, Serrill chronicled Resler's teams for several years, demonstrating that if one sticks to a subject long enough, powerful things will emerge.
08/17/06
An astounding drama that spans seven years, wrestling with issues of race, gender and class while capturing the struggles of competition with intelligence and intimacy.
08/17/06
The girls' theatrical ferocity, relative innocence and youthful earnestness is almost heartbreaking.
08/07/06
Few athletic films, factual or dramatized, have given so keen a sense of how a team builds and changes, and how acutely the grind and elation of a fast, complex sport can shape character and lives.
07/28/06
Occasionally thrilling, often challenging and consistently engaging ...
07/28/06
Related Forums
(Docu)-THE HEART OF THE GAME gets a preem in the Tribeca Film Fest SHOWCASE section!!
by: REEL_REVIEWER 3/3/07
by: REEL_REVIEWER 3/3/07
(Docu)-THE HEART OF THE GAME gets a preem in the Tribeca Film Fest SHOWCASE section!!
by: REEL_REVIEWER 3/3/07
by: REEL_REVIEWER 3/3/07
(Docu)-THE HEART OF THE GAME gets a preem in the Tribeca Film Fest SHOWCASE section!!
by: REEL_REVIEWER 3/3/07
by: REEL_REVIEWER 3/3/07
(Docu)-THE HEART OF THE GAME gets a preem in the Tribeca Film Fest SHOWCASE section!!
by: REEL_REVIEWER 3/3/07
by: REEL_REVIEWER 3/3/07
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