It's your typical breezy underdog movie like Real Steel, Remember the Titans, Invictus, Mighty Ducks et al. But Adam Sandler totally carries it to something you can get invested in.
I'm more surprised by the positive reviews from critics. These kind of stories aren't generally received well by them.
Juancho Hernangomez was great in this too.
shareJust watched this. It was surprisingly okay.
Maybe let down a little by the end - i.e. he screws up at the combine but by a stroke of luck there's a secret game organised for a couple of days later, and there's guys there - i.e. club owners / coaches - saying "Hey, who is this kid?". Who are thes guys - strongly associated with basketball - that seemingly haven't seen either a) the media campaign they whipped up to get him into the combine or b) the combine itself?!
Then, rather fortuitously, the women from the starts shows up saying she'll be playing a more active role and the brother, who'd been the active owner, had screwed up (how?) and is now out...
On a positive I guess it was at least counter to expectations that he landed up with another team. But the ending was perhaps wrapped up a little too neatly.