More Than a Game Shoots for the Heart

More Than a Game, a documentary following LeBron James and his high school teammates, does its best to be an inspirational movie, and for some it works. For others, it inspires eye-rolling. Here’s what they’re saying:

• It’s like a classic high school sports movie, writes Owen Glieberman for Entertainment Weekly.  “It's almost funny to see how many classic Hollywood tropes are replicated, with far more vivid drama.”

• It’s a “moving” film that “suffers from a surfeit of hindsight,” Joe Morgenstern writes in the Wall Street Journal. But the courtside sermons are “worthy,” and the film “dramatizes what it preaches.”
• “It’s an inspiring story," allows Christy Lemire for the AP, "that works very hard to remind you it's an inspiring story at every opportunity." Speeches are frequently delivered to soaring music.
• But Nick Pinkerton wasn’t all that inspired. LeBron and Nike got final cut, and the end product is "as processed as Space Jam,” he writes for the Village Voice.

(More LeBron James stories.)