He Got Game: Critic Reviews

Milwaukee Bucks guard Ray Allen delivers nothing less than the best performance ever put on film by a pro athlete.

He Got Game is Lee's best film since Malcolm X.

As usual, Lee tries many kinds of stylistic effects and uses wall-to-wall music (by Aaron Copland and Public Enemy); what's different this time is how personally driven the story feels.

The wildly uneven script includes both disciplined, lively riffs and amateurishly artificial exchanges.

At the end of Mr. Lee's movie, all you feel is the distraction of Mr. Lee's stylistic exhibitionism, without which, I concede, he might not be regarded as a genius in some quarters.

Lacking the moral indignation and militant politics of Lee's former work, this vibrantly colorful father-son melodrama is soft at the center, but it's one of the most accessible films Lee has made and Denzel Washington is terrific.

A two-hour air ball.

He Got Game is a little too sappy to be a great movie, but it puts the ball in the hole.

[Lee] gets a charming performance from Allen, who, in his acting debut, occupies his pedestal with grace and diffidence.

an effective companion piece to Hoop Dreams and Blue Chips.

Washington is so consistently effective an actor that it hardly needs be said that his excellent performance as the beleaguered Jake carries the film.

A long, boring, meandering, dog of a movie.

Lee's attack on how big business is not only ruining the game he loves but also playing with people's lives is direct and brave, while his passion, insight and intelligence are evident and admirable.

Though too long by a good half hour, Lee's latest film packs a genuine emotional punch.

Most scenes play too long, with a surplus of ideas, textures, tones and characters, and after 134 minutes it's clear Lee's problem with closure hasn't gone away.

Lee paints intimate characters who are about more than the game. Themes of integrity, honesty, loyalty and familial love are woven through the film resulting in a complex, thought-provoking human drama.

Shrewdly exposes the underbelly of college recruiting and the pressures exerted on talented high school basketball stars.

Flawed but powerful.

It is a wonderful thing to watch two artists work so well together. I am speaking, in this case, of Spike Lee and Denzel Washington.

The hypocritical misogyny of He Got Game is a fundamental weakness that reviewers so far have been happy to downplay or even to dismiss.

Lee should have drawn up a tighter game plan but just the same his hoops hoopla still has enough game (mostly in the form of Washington) to win over the audience.

As brilliant and perplexing as the filmmaker himself.

Only a director as good as Spike Lee could make a coherent movie out of this messy, jejune set-up ...

Washington's Jake Shuttlesworth looks tough and hard, an odd but refreshing turn for an actor long associated with handsomely heroic roles.

As much a technical achievement as a narrative one.