Hoosiers is dumb, but accurate. If you've ever had the misfortune of spending any time in the Midwest, you know it's a desolate land of corn and cornpone. Hoosiers captures that pretty accurately, hence 3 stars. And since it was made in the 1980s, they searched high and low for a story without any minority characters in the foreground.
But the rest is just a shallow redux of Rocky or any number of other sports films about the plucky underdog who has to find the huckleberry gumption to do something really important in life . . . Like win a high school basketball championship.
Yes, this is a town of homely Al Bundy's with bad haircuts and houses with silos built next to them. Only it features a weird 80s synthesizer and orchestral soundtrack that immediately takes you out of the 1950s era it's supposed to be set in.
Gene Hackman does his usual Gene Hackman performance, and Dennis Hopper does his usual Dennis Hopper performance, except with a weird hill jack haircut.
There are no surprises in Hoosiers, and, thus, no real drama. You know how it's going to turn out, and all the melodramatic manipulations won't change anything. If you get the impression people in Indiana don't have much to live for except high school athletics and, maybe, going through the motions of evangelical religion (when they're not mouthing off or sundowning minorities, it seems), then this movie will just affirm your opinion. As a period piece, it more or less looks like what photos from the era suggest. Bad hair, poorly fitting suits, people who look one part mean and one part depressed. The ending where they beat a team of -- gasp! -- Black players represents their greatest fears because, you know. I wish I was making this up, but it was the 80s.
But the rest is just a shallow redux of Rocky or any number of other sports films about the plucky underdog who has to find the huckleberry gumption to do something really important in life . . . Like win a high school basketball championship.
Yes, this is a town of homely Al Bundy's with bad haircuts and houses with silos built next to them. Only it features a weird 80s synthesizer and orchestral soundtrack that immediately takes you out of the 1950s era it's supposed to be set in.
Gene Hackman does his usual Gene Hackman performance, and Dennis Hopper does his usual Dennis Hopper performance, except with a weird hill jack haircut.
There are no surprises in Hoosiers, and, thus, no real drama. You know how it's going to turn out, and all the melodramatic manipulations won't change anything. If you get the impression people in Indiana don't have much to live for except high school athletics and, maybe, going through the motions of evangelical religion (when they're not mouthing off or sundowning minorities, it seems), then this movie will just affirm your opinion. As a period piece, it more or less looks like what photos from the era suggest. Bad hair, poorly fitting suits, people who look one part mean and one part depressed. The ending where they beat a team of -- gasp! -- Black players represents their greatest fears because, you know. I wish I was making this up, but it was the 80s.