Wasn't it Will Rogers who once said that the reason you don't see too many great basketball movies is because there ain't any? Okay, he didn't really say that, but he might have after seeing The Air Up There.
It's not such a bad movie — it just isn't much of anything. The Air Up There tries to be an uplifting comedy, but mostly ends up being dull and pointless. The whole movie is so lacking in focus that even the line that explains the title goes by with barely a notice.
Kevin Bacon plays an assistant basketball coach at St. Joseph University. He has a bum knee, a bad attitude and a big mouth. He's supposed to go to Boise to recruit a new player, but follows a hunch and winds up in Kenya, instead. He's seen pictures of a tribal chief's son who's 6' 8", and knows how to slam dunk. All Bacon has to do is teach him how to play the rest of the game.
Well, Bacon does have a few other problems. He has to win the tribe's trust,
reconcile the chief with one of his sons and coach the whole village through a winner-takes-all basketball game against the greedy copper company that's threatening to steal the tribe's land. (If you can't guess how the movie ends, you're just going to have to splurge for a ticket. Though if you can't figure out who wins the game, you probably can't figure out how to drive to the theater.)
Wouldn't it be easier to just buy the player a new car and give him straight As?
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