MovieChat Forums > Hoop Dreams (1994) Discussion > Are the critics crazy, or am I??

Are the critics crazy, or am I??

posted 19 years ago by haverpopper4
105 replies | jump to latest

**Warning, some spoilers below**

So I finally saw "Hoop Dreams" last night, and while I thought it was good, and sometimes even very good (I think I'd give it a respectable 7/10 on Imdb) I'm frankly astonished that this is the movie that Roger Ebert listed as the Best Movie of the 90s, and that was on more critics top 10 lists in 1994 than any other movie. I think my main problem was that I was unable to empathize with the characters quite as much as the filmmakers intended me to (or as much as many critics evidently did). But how could I, considering how maddeningly stupid the boys and their families could be throughout the film?? Now, I don't want to overstate things, and I realize that there was a lot of hardship and misery that the families could not avoid, but there were equal amounts of stupidity on display. Members of both boy's families repeatedly lost minimum wage jobs; no explanations were given for the majority of these losses, but it seems likely that given, for example, Arthur's father's crack problem and William's brother's attitude problem, they weren't good workers who were simply let go because of tough economic times. But this is glossed over, and instead we're treated to a minor rant from Arthur's mother about how the people in charge of welfare just "don't care." Now, I know it's not her fault that her husband was a crackhead moron, but I also can't help but be a bit skeptical that she couldn't keep a job because of "chronic back pain," considering the way she was able to move when Arthur scored in a basketball game.

And how about William's brother? Am I really supposed to sympathize with him? The guy had a promising basketball career and a college scholarship, but his attitude was so bad that he lost out on both, becomes a security guard, and then even loses that job, for unexplained (but surmisable) reasons, and sits at home without a job for months on end. Reading through some reviews, I get the impression that I'm supposed to view this guy as a tragic victim of the ghettoes, but as far as I can see (given the information we have from the movie) he has no one to blame but himself.

And as for the two leads, William and Arthur. Naturally you want to sympathize with the guys, but sometimes they just make it hard, especially Arthur. Was I the only one watching the movie who wanted to slap the guy upside the head, make him sit up straight, look his teachers in the eye, and pay attention in class? He seemed to have some good teachers (both at the Catholic school and the inner city school, the latter of which, incidentally, didn't seem to be the unsurmountable urban jungle of popular imagination) but the kid was so stupid and disruptive he barely graduated. If his education was as important as his mother claimed, why didn't she do what any responsible parent would do and threaten to take him off the basketball team if he didn't knuckle down in his studies?? William fares much better in this regard, and there's some indication that he has some degree of untapped academic potential. But really, how dumb do you have to be to take the ACT 5 times, including free special tutorial training sessions, and still only average a 17.5, which then has to be rounded up to an 18, the **bare minimum** needed to get a sports scholarship?? And then there are the maddening personal choices made by the boys, both fathering illegitamate children before the movie is over -- guess that Catholic education did William a lot of good. Anyways, being dumb and inarticulate (which both boys also are) does not make one a bad person, but it does make one a less interesting documentary subject.

I realize I've been harsh, but I'm not totally unsympathetic to the boys and their families. The way they were manipulated by the system was also maddening, and no one came out in a very good light. (Though, for all the reviewers who demonize the "system" on display in the movie, it also had its good side, such as Marquette honoring its commitment to let William keep his scholarship even after dropping out of the basketball team.) And I'm sure the life in inner city Chicago was not easy -- some of Arthur's idiocy can be excused by the actions of his father. (The scene where he sees his coked up dad on the basketball court was the most astonishing scene in the film for me.) But at the end of the day, in too many ways the boys and their families held themselves back too much for me to rank this as the masterpiece so many others found it to be.

[–] spookyrat1 11 years ago

I just watched it last night for the first time. I think it was a great subject for a documentary and interesting up to a point, but too l-o-n-g! Yes I know it was telling a story over a five year length, but half way through the film you are just approaching the end of the first year and frankly I wanted things to speed up a little.

[–] Pythe 10 years ago

I notice that all the people who not-so-politely suggest that the subjects of Hoop Dreams need to just shut up and get a job ignore the fact that Arthur's mom DID get certified to become a nurse's assistant (the scene where she finds out she passed her exam with an 89 almost made me cheer). She obviously worked her butt off to raise her kids while also training to get a better job, one that paid above minimum wage, and even held hopes for going on to become an RN.

I'm not the sort of person who will make excuses for every mistake William and Arthur made, but I also find it incredibly difficult to avoid sympathizing with them. They grew up in a neighborhood where drugs and gang activity were related; it seems like it was an accomplishment just to stay away from that lifestyle in that environment. I respected Arthur for working at Pizza Hut for less than $4/hour when he could have made a lot more with much less effort dealing drugs. He didn't take the easy way out; he clearly wanted something better and repeatedly expressed desires not to repeat his father's mistakes.

Did the boys, especially William, fail to take advantage of the educational opportunities afforded them? Yes, they did, and you can certainly find fault with them for that. But at the same time, they didn't grow up in a culture that encouraged academia. They saw basketball as their only ticket out of the ghetto, and I can't blame them for that. Representations of successful blacks were hardly ubiquitous at the time outside of sports; the boys could relate to Isaiah Thomas because he had the same background as them. Who else was there in popular media for them to identify with? Dr. Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show? Might as well have been white. When the entire world is telling you that you have limited roles you can play in the game of life because of your skin color and neighborhood, you start to believe it. It doesn't excuse their lack of respect for education, but it makes it understandable.

Hoop Dreams is about racial and economic concerns, certainly. But it's also a very human story. Anybody who can't be bothered to try and empathize with the main subjects clearly just doesn't want to understand life from a different perspective. And such a person would be all the poorer for it.

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"People either loved us or they hated us...or they thought we were okay."

[–] 10 years ago

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[–] OneMovieLover 8 years ago

While I consider Hoop Dreams to be an excellent film, I was also not as affected by the documentary as many critics were. As for Ebert naming it the highest cinematic achievement of its decade...well, I couldn't even call it the best of 1994: what about Through the Olive Trees and, glaringly, Satan's Tango? (It's funny; I disagree with Ebert's 1990's tastes far more often than his feelings on films of any other time period, with which I am generally on the same page.)

I found William's story to be more compelling than Arthur's because William was, from what we can see, more mature. Of course one should sympathize with these boys for, if nothing else, the fact that they are innocent people living in inner-city Chicago – and this quality is part of what makes the film culturally important to this day – but if the well-executed ending scenes of Arthur's arc had not been there (e.g. family's prayers, crying as he leaves, the somber musical accompaniment) as the moving closing that it was, I perhaps would've been left feeling that the film was overlong.

The film-making is generally of a high quality, though not stellar. Every once in a while there is a rocky transition between sequences, and the scene in which William opens his final ACT results is downright amateurishly shot.

[–] 7 years ago

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