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.