Michael Jordan: An American Hero

The name pretty much butchers this (ahem) movie. Look, Michael Jordan is a great Basketball player & a legend to the NBA (let alone the Chicago Bulls). But he was never a soldier in a war or anything like that. So why would Fox Family intitle this (ahem) movie 'An American Hero'.

That Michael Jace character doesn't really look much like M.J.. But the rest of the movie should be at least worth watching. That is, if it's still on T.V. anymore now that the Fox Family channel is dead & gone.

As a die hard North Carolina Tar Heel fan, I cringe at some of the things in this movie. For example: - Michael and his roommate, Buzz Peterson, walk into their first day of practice at North Carolina and say, "Hey look, there's James Worthy, there's Al Wood, there's Sam Perkins." College basketball practice starts on October 15 (it is an NCAA violation to start earlier). They would have been in school 6 or 7 weeks at that point and would have met and befriended all of their teammates long before then. Also, Al Wood graduated the year before MJ came to Carolina so they never played together.

• At MJ's first practice, Dean Smith looks at one of his assistants and says, "I think we've got a player here, Pete." A tiny bit of research would show the assistants that year (and actually from 78-86) were Bill Guthridge, Eddie Fogler, and Roy Williams. Dean Smith never had an assistant named Pete.

• After Carolina wins the NCAA championship, Dean Smith stands at mid-court with a mic and says, "This is our first national championship in 24 years and we owe it all to Michael." Please! For starters, it had been 25 years, not 24. And Dean Smith would never give all the credit to one player, no matter what they did. And, heck, it was James Worthy who scored 28 points in that game and was named MVP of the final four. If they owed it to anyone, it was him.

• MJ has been in the NBA for several years when he tells his mother he is going back to school to get his degree. He never stopped going to school. He took classes all summer in 1985 and graduated in 1986 - only one year late.

Rating: 2 out of 10; 1/2 Star

Part II

More problems with the film:

(6) MAJOR FUDGING OF HISTORY, 1982 NCAA Finals, UNC vs. Georgetown - In the film, Jordan hits the game winning jumper and the clock runs out. The film skips what happened in real life after Jordan hit that jumper. Jordan hit the jumper with about 16 seconds left on the clock, to put UNC up by one. Georgetown brought the ball up past half-court with about 9 seconds left on the clock, and Georgetown's Fred Brown inexplicably passed the ball to UNC's James Worthy, who raced to the other end of the court and was fouled. This sealed the game. The film pretends like it never happened, because when the film shows time run out in the game, Jordan is in the same spot where he hit his jumper, and his teammates rush to him to congratulate him. (7) No 1984 Olympics? (8) Chicago Stadium, 1984 - The film tries to get across the point that home attendance was very low for the Bulls before Jordan's arrival. It over-exaggerates. The film shows part of a game during Jordan's rookie year. There are about 200 people in the stands, and most of the people at the press table seem to be either half asleep or distracted by boredom. In reality, the Bulls averaged around 6,000 fans per game at home when Jordan first joined the team. The film strains credibility here. (9) Broxton - who is this guy? The film has some fictional hotheaded team member named Broxton confronting Jordan early in Jordan's career, grilling Jordan about not being a team player. This guy doesn't appear in any official NBA guide I've seen. (10) Chicago, 1986 - Jordan is completely bald, for reasons undisclosed; in reality, Jordan didn't actually start shaving his head bald until around 1989, after about two years of showing thinning hair in spots; Jordan inherited his father's follicles. (11) No foot injury in 1986? This seems like an important career circumstance not to skip over; Jordan missed 64 regular season games during the 1985-86 season, but came back for the playoffs to score 63 in a 1st round game vs. the Celtics. (12) The gratuitous leg shot of Robin Givens getting into a taxi - I've got no problem with this, visually; however, I'm sure Juanita Jordan might have something to say about it. (13) Chicago, 1989 - Phil Jackson becomes the Bulls' head coach, and the Bulls have a title contending team; what happened to Doug Collins? what happened to the Charles Oakley for Bill Cartwright trade? we should have at least seen some sort of transitional montage, as the team gets better with players like Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, etc; nothing about playoff frustration against the Celtics and Pistons? (14) Zen master, Phil Jackson - yeah, Phil is a philosopher and a spiritual guy, but here he's a cross between Mr. Miyagi and Yoda; I doubt Phil is that wacky, and he is a very good basketball mind. (15) 1991 Playoffs - In the film, an announcer says, "The Bulls down the New York Knicks and are on their way to the first NBA championship series in their history."; the Knicks were actually the Bulls 1st round victims in the 1991 playoffs; Philadelphia and Detroit followed in the Eastern Conference. (16) 1991 on-court Championship celebration is overly staged. (17) United Center/Chicago Stadium - The Bulls did not move into the United Center until the 1993-94 season, during which Jordan was temporarily retired; in the film, it is spring 1993, and Jordan pulls into a stadium parking lot, where he talks with some kids; you can make out a partially obscured sign in the background, which says, "ED CENTER"; the Bulls played in Chicago Stadium during the 1992-93 season, as the United Center was still under construction. (18) The aforementioned kids Jordan talks with in the stadium parking lot - those kids could never have just walked into the player parking lot for Chicago Stadium or the United Center. (19) 1993 Eastern Conference Championship series - The film has an announcer claiming that the Knicks have just defeated the Bulls in the 3rd game of the Eastern Conference Finals; this is wrong; The Bulls trailed 2-0 after 2 losses in New York, and came back to win the series 4-2. (20) Post 1993 Championship - In the film, James Jordan sits in the arena where the final game of the 1993 NBA Finals was played (America West Arena; Phoenix, AZ) and talks with a character who is supposed to be a long time Chicago Stadium employee (played by Lou Rawls); their conversation seems to indicate that the two are at Chicago Stadium in Chicago, IL; Lou Rawls' character says that he's been working "this place" for a lot of years and before Michael Jordan arrived, you could shoot a cannon through "this place" and nobody would even hear it. (21) Birmingham Barons homerun - Jordan did hit two homers with the Barons in his first minor league season; the film shows Jordan hit one over the fence with the Barons in what appears to be a practice game or batting practice, not an actual game; the film is unclear what the circumstances are. (22) March 1995 - why stop here? "Space Jam" already covered much of this territory; we know that Jordan did not return to the Bulls in top form, and the Bulls lost to Orlando in the 1995 playoffs; we know that Jordan worked hard in the 1995 off-season to get back to top form, and he led the Bulls to 3 more consecutive championships; we know about the final shot of Jordan's career in June 1998.

The major problems with this movie are a bad concept, poor script, poor research, and a cheap budget. Some of the problems are a surprise, considering that Fox Family has money. This film ranks among the worst sports movies of all-time.

In the 1960's when Michael Jordan was a young boy in the suburban middle classes throwing a basketball into a dustbin instead of a hoop and playing baseball, nobody would have suspected what he would become some thirty years later. An early experience of racism perhaps puts him off baseball but he takes up basketball with the same intensity that he approaches everything. High Schools seems him working hard to get into the main school team and from there he continues into North Carolina's starting line up. It is here that he makes his name and when he is drafted by the Chicago Bulls it is only the worries of his doting parents that cause him pause.

Like most people across the globe, I'm an admirer of not only Jordan's skills but also his drive to get what he wanted – that I had a thimbleful of that motivation. So it was natural that I would take the chance to watch this film, especially since this was the first I had seen available on television in the UK. Having read the book "Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World he Made" I like to think that I am at least a bit aware of Jordan's history if nothing else and it is a shame that this film doesn't quite have the same eye for a story and for a character that the aforementioned book did. Instead the film is like a sprint through elements of the story, never missing an opportunity to simplify or turn into melodrama anything that might have approached an interesting moment. The basic story doesn't feel anywhere near as interesting or as inspiring as it really is mainly because the film just skims through things to the point where it feels more than a "by the numbers" TV filler movie than it is a true story; in fairness that is just what it is – by-the-numbers filler stuff; the subject really deserved better.

The cheap and cheerful effect is felt mainly in the script, which allows for no real character development and no development of themes. The writers knew they had to have their Jordan be competitive, learn teamwork and other things that are well known – so these things are put in in one or two scenes and then never really run through the character as a trait in the way it should have been. Outside of this there is nothing and all the actors just feel like they are reading lines and playing whatever character is easiest to do. Some have been very harsh on Jace but, having seen him do good work with a good character on The Shield, I can't help but feel sorry for him because the script gives him nothing to work with apart from basic emotions and actions. Support is no better; Hudson just plays it affable and warm, Givens has two notes to hit and just about does them. The very low budget is shown in the actual production – nobody wanted to pay out cash to use the NBA logos and such so the strips simply have the words "Chicago Bulls" written on it and the NBA logo is just a wiggley line! The game action would have struck me as being pretty damn important but it is sorely lacking; normally we see the celebrations after a win (very poor atmosphere) but the one or two shots we see in the whole film are filmed so that we assume it goes in so that Jace doesn't have to make the shot to get the take to count! Overall this is a worthy subject but a terrible film. It is cheap, poorly written, the characters are paper-thin and the game action is so lame as to make you wonder why they bothered with it at all. There is a fascinating character piece within this story and there are plenty of books that tell it reasonably well but this film is certainly not able to do anything with it. In fairness it is no worse than all the melodramatic nonsense clogging up daytime television but the fact that we all know the real story (and know it much better than this told it) means that this is a total waste of time.

Horrible. They changed Basketball history for dramatic purposes. So! It's not only horrible, it's a partly fictional biography. Michael Jaze makes you laugh as he tries to put down Michael Jordan.