I will not rest until I’ve seen every sports movie that exists. Yeah so they all have a similar sort of plot and the old “teamwork makes the dream work” message, but I don’t care. I love them. They are my weakness. What an underrated genre.
Back in 2005, Samuel L. Jackson starred as the titular Coach Carter; a basketball coach from California who is assigned a new team at the start of the movie. Unfortunately for him, the squad he is given are generally a bunch of delinquents with poor grades, who have way more confidence in their basketball skills than they should warrant. The previous high school year, the team lost every single game, and it’s up to Coach Carter to bring them up to scratch. Based on a true story, when the team start the new season undefeated, Carter benches the entire group after their academic grades steadily continue to decline. The film follows what happened when he sidelined the bunch of them, and the reaction of the townspeople after he did so.
Sports aside, I can’t review this movie without mentioning the soundtrack. All of the 90s/early 2000s R&B here is amazing. The most nostalgic thing about it, Coach Carter comes filled with absolute anthems including Hope by Faith Evans and She Wants to Move by N.E.R.D., plus so many others. If you were around and conscious during the late nineties, this will absolutely take you back in a time capsule.
More seriously, it’s interesting to see how education still matters when you’re an aspiring sports star in the USA. That’s something that a lot of movies in this genre omit in their scripts, but this one manages to fit that within the story and still keep it interesting. On paper, watching a film about a bunch of basketball players who are flunking school doesn’t sound all that exciting, but Jackson’s gravitas keeps you so invested that you – as the viewer – are rooting for these kids as if you were Carter himself.
Every character is extremely charming and lovable in this too, and it really helps the viewer to root for them. Some subplots are less thrilling and less necessary than others (the Ashanti pregnancy story line for example is completely pointless and should have been redacted), but all of them at least give each character a whole backstory. Jackson’s personal, well-thought out performance aside, the group of youngsters here are so fun and likeable that any mild blips in acting ability fall to one side with ease.
Is this my favourite sports movie of all time? No, that honour still goes to Remember the Titans. But I nearly cried at least 4 times watching this movie. Technically – in a film-making sense – it’s not particularly amazing either, but I still loved it. If you have even the slightest affinity for sports, you will too.
I told you that sports movies were my weakness.
Coach Carter is available to stream on Netflix in the UK.
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