Blue Chips

This isn't a bad movie at all. Considering the scandals that have come to light about college athletes receiving cars, houses, money, etc. this film has even more relevance today than it did when it first came out.

To see a Shaquille O'Neal full of potential and natural talent (yet not yet spoiled by his own success) is a thrill - even for a Kings fan. His acting isn't the point; it's the few scenes that show him actually playing basketball that are worth watching for.

Nick Nolte carries the movie and Mary McDonnell is great in a supporting role. It's not just a film for those who follow hoops or hate the inexplicable incompetence of the NCAA, it's also a story about the human condition.

Yes, I would admit that this movie is not THE greatest basketball movie of all time. I suppose Hoosiers would get that title. The only real pet-peave I had is that the basketball players such as Penny, Shaq, and Matt are not exactly Shakespearean actors. Of course, their athletic ability is perfect for their parts and the movie covers their acting deficiencies enough with plenty of playing scenes including numerous dunks by Shaq. I'm a huge college b-ball fan and the cameos including Pitino, Knight, Tark, and Dicky V give the movie a better sense of realism. Knight was certainly great at playing himself, which involves yelling-cursing at the players and refs. Nick Nolte makes this movie, however. He comes off thoroughly convincing as a veteran college coach who is facing the twilight of his career and considers illegal recruiting tactics to get a winning team again. The series of the movie with his recruiting visits is the best part. He did a great job at kissing up to the players and parents. Now is this movie realistic? I don't know for sure, but it was still entertaining and fun to watch nonetheless.

Pete Bell is a college basketball coach. He's under pressure to win and is under pressure to get the players by any means necessary. How will he stand up to the pressure or will he give in to pressure?

Basketball movies are often the `weak team overcomes' type and are not exactly great. Some are good (Hoosiers) but most are mildly distracting at best (The air up there), few reach the heights of Hoop Dreams. However Blue Chips is good because it manages to cast a critical eye over the real world of college ball – there are no small town winners, there are no `kids with hearts of gold' etc – instead it is as much a business as the NBA and the stakes are high to get the best players.

Bell shows us how he must juggle doing what's right but also doing what the players want in order to get a winning team. This is refreshing – rather than yet another sports movie with the same old cliches. The down side is that it doesn't go far enough in my mind and it doesn't offer solutions.

Nolte is good and is really convincing as a coach – even if he's a bit OTT at times on the sidelines. His support is great in the form of McDonnell, Walsh, Woodard and the real players of Shaq and Penny do OK. The cast is also filled out with plenty of coaches, commentators and such from real life – so there's plenty to see.

Overall this is one of my favourite basketball movies simply because it tells it like it is – even if it does have it's weaknesses.

Blue Chips was a movie that was at least a decade ahead of its time, and its story is more relevant today than when the movie came out. It presents a question that other sports movies, including amateur sports movies, haven't explored. Namely, why should you bother to follow the rules when cheating is already widespread? Is it wrong to cheat if that's what it takes to compete? Is widespread cheating in amateur athletics the inevitable result of fans' obsession with winning? This movie would seem to suggest that the answers to those last two questions are "no" and "yes". Almost every other sports movie of the past 50 years has had some kind of uplifting ending, but this one ends mostly on a downer.

Nick Nolte plays a college basketball coach, coaching at a major California basketball school (which might as well be UCLA), clearly modeled after Bobby Knight. He's a hot-tempered, aging and increasingly frustrated, old-school guy whose record has slipped in recent years. A shady booster enters the picture, trying to convince him that if he wants to be on top again, he has to start playing "the game" with recruits. He has to start making deals. Coach Nolte is initially hostile to the guy, but after it looks like he's going to get shut out of getting three huge recruits, he reluctantly changes his mind. Nolte gives an excellent performance in this movie. Everything that he does in the movie, whether it's angry tantrums against refs or the occasional dose of humor, he does well. He is convincing as a guy who just wants to mold student-athletes and coach the game that he loves. The speech that he gives at the end is priceless.

The more I read about recruiting, especially basketball recruiting, the more I feel like I need to take a shower. This movie perfectly captures the sleaze of the sport during its recruiting scenes. There's the scum bag "deal maker" mother, who tries to peddle her influence to the highest bidder. There is the superstar white kid, who recognizes his value and demands a huge pile of cash. One kid eventually gets a new car. The movie ultimately presents a pretty revolting picture of college athletics, and if you have followed the scandals at places like Auburn, you know that it is pretty accurate.

This movie could have been a failure, but it has that one important trait that all great sports movies have. It was made with a genuine love and respect for the sport. There is a lot of basketball porn in this movie, perhaps even too much. There are scenes that show Nolte coaching Xs and Os. The coaches yell out a bunch of terminology during practices and games, as opposed to 95% of sports movies, where coaches never sound like actual coaches. Blue Chips tries to be one of the more realistic sports movies ever made, and it largely succeeds. It perhaps goes a little too far though with the basketball porn, showing tons and tons of slam dunks and three pointers. If you watch this movie, you would get the impression that 90% of the scoring in basketball is due to these two plays. It also has a somewhat annoying appearance by Dick Vitale, which serves no purpose except to remind you that you are watching a basketball movie. The movie also shoehorns a few too many current basketball stars into it. That might have made it sell better at the time, but do you really care now whether Penny Hardaway and Bobby Hurley appear in it? (And Hurley plays for Indiana in this movie – LULZ).

The worst part about this movie, ultimately, is the casting of the basketball stars in it. Namely, Shaquille O'Neal, who can't act his way out of a paper bag. To make matters worse, they give his character the most interesting background story, that of a Gulf War veteran with a "Black power, we shall overcome" type attitude. He's awful. He's really awful. It's as if he had a part written for Ice Cube or Denzel Washington, but then the studio decided that they needed a big name star in the case. He doesn't have many lines, but the ones that he has are not good.

Blue Chips is one of those sports movies that you should see at least once. It's unlikely that you will remember it amongst the best that you have seen, but if you follow college athletics, you should at least find it interesting. Blue Chips shows us the hypocrisy of college athletics, and the seemingly futile endeavor of trying to keep money out of the hands of athletes. It is though provoking, albeit a bit preachy. Given the current debates about whether we should be paying players, this movie is now more relevant than it ever has been.