Playground

In a situation that has echoes of Michael Jordan's experience in high school, young Walt finds that he doesn't make the cut when the basketball lineup for the season is announced. His coach's words of wisdom about trying harder and using the rejection as a motivator to improve is greeted with cynicism and Walt goes away disheartened. Half-heartedly shooting in the playground, Walt is considering the point of it whenever an unexpected shooting partner turns up with some words of wisdom and challenges of his own for Walt.

Unlike the accepted wisdom that there really isn't a safer pair of hands than Jordan, the NBA seemed to be confused about how to really use the inspiration figurehead that they suddenly had on their hands. Faced with hours of clips and footage the quandary seemed to be how best to utilise it. This "problem" must have been handed to the NBA marketing department, a team more used to do corporate videos, because I cannot think of any other reason for yet another Jordan film that puts clips and "talking head" contributions together with all the heart and imagination of one of those "hi, I'm Bob Jones, CEO of etc etc" films that employees of blue chip companies have to suffer though before smiling and saying what a great use of £100k it was.

So here we have the collection of game clips framed with a series of "dramatic" sequences where Jordan delivers wisdom to a "youth" in need of a lesson. Starting with the dramatic sequences it perhaps goes without saying that they are rubbish and contain about as much wood as your average court floor. It is so unnatural and unconvincing that I found it quite painful even though I could see that it was "worthy" and that it was a genuine effort to harness the life-lessons within his career. Fortunately the film has its fair share of clips that demonstrate the determination and inspiration that the dramatic scenes allude to. These are rarely less than sensational and they make the film well worth seeing for all basketball fans. The talking-heads sort of fall in the middle somewhere in regards quality as mostly they are genuine and interesting but occasionally do have the air of pre-prepared marketing speak that has been put on an autocue for the players to read. The musical number at the end is also pretty awful.

Overall then a worthy enough attempt to tell a story but just a shame that it is all so wooden, sanitised and "corporate" with terrible direction from Snyder. The game action and some of the contributions make it watchable but it is unavoidable that much of the film feels like those rubbish "motivation" posters of eagles etc that you find in gyms and boardroom walls.

AKA, Zack Snyder's directorial debut, and a sign of things to come. He certainly had and still has an epic, cinematic sensibility with regard to visuals. Slow-motion is clearly something that fascinates and excites him, and the dynamism of bodies in motion is something that goes all the way back to the birth of cinema itself. His background in sports-adjacent TV programming of course means that he shares some key elements in common with Andy Sidaris, down to the idolization/fetishization of the human form. As for this relatively minor mini-doc, there's nothing egregiously bad or terribly special about it. It merely exists. My favorite part was when the documentary/after-school special pretense is dropped at the end, and it turns into a New Jack Swing music video.

What's amazing about this inspirational video/documentary is that when it was made Michael Jordan had not yet won a championship. He was getting all of this incredible well-deserved praise, yet he was missing that all-important ring. It was like everyone knew that a championship for Jordan was a forgone conclusion.

"Playground" is a montage of SOME of Jordan's highlights with commentary from Jordan himself as well as some of the best players of that time: Isiah Thomas, Chris Mullins, Kevin Johnson, Joe Dumars, Magic Johnson, Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond, Scottie Pippen, and others. This is one of many tributes to Michael Jordan, and as good as it is, it is far from the best. The music is abysmal and the few skits in there were barely good enough for an afterschool special, but don't let that get in your way of enjoying some fantastic Jordan highlights.

Both Michael Jordan and director Zack Snyder reached greater heights after this documentary.