Nominated* for two Oscars(r) and hailed by Sports Illustrated and ESPN as one of the best sports movies of all time, this triumphant tale of a high school basketball team’s long-shot attempt to win the state championship is filled with edge-of-your-seat suspense and breathless excitement! Featuring “fast-break cinematography that catches the pace of the game.One of the most rousingly enjoyable sports movies ever made, this small-town drama tells the story of the Hickory Huskers, an underdog basketball team from a tiny Indiana high school that makes it all the way to the state championship tournament. It’s a familiar story, but sensitive direction and a splendid screenplay helped make this one of the best films of 1986, highlighted by the superb performances of Gene Hackman as the Huskers’ coach, and Oscar nominee Dennis Hopper as the alcoholic father of one of the team’s key players. As the drama unfolds we come to realize that many of the characters (including Barbara Hershey as a schoolteacher with whom Hackman falls in love) are recovering from disappointing setbacks, and this depth of character is what makes the otherwise conventional basketball story so richly rewarding. Like Rocky, Rudy, and Breaking Away, this is a quintessentially American movie about beating the odds and rising above one’s own limitations. Just try to watch it without cheering! –Jeff Shannon
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April 15, 2008
#1
This must be the worst, most pathetic film I have seen. I bought this movie because I like Gene Hackman. The movie is boring and slow moving. I have never been to Indiana, and now I am sure I NEVER wish to go there. The movie is full of drab, dull, lifeless and bleak scenes. The acting is okay, and the music is good. What is so exciting about a school winning a state championship? This happens all the time. Why do they make a movie of this? I highly suggest NOT purchasing this movie. This movie is a total waste of time and money. I would have rated it with zero stars, but it would not let me do that.
April 15, 2008
#2
This film starts out promisingly with some beautiful photography showing Indiana in the fall. It soon bogs down to repetitious basketball footage and cliche characters going about their wretched lives pointlessly. If you like shots of basketballs bouncing off of backboards, this film might be entertaining. To me, it was like being hit in the face continually with a basketball for the better part of two hours.
Oh well, it beats watching the NBA.
April 15, 2008
#3
I recently watched Hoosiers for the first time, which is somewhat surprising since I’m such a big Gene Hackman fan. Unfortunately, even the venerable Mr. Hackman was no match for the colossal awfulness of Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack for this movie. What the hell were the producers thinking? Nearly every scene is musically manhandled, telegraphing to audience which of two things they should be feeling: maudlin sentimentality or triumphantly “goin’ places!”. The insufferable bombast of 1980′s over-production that begat John Tesh, in particular the gallons of gated reverb assigned to the synthetic drums (this is supposed to be 1952, for crying out loud) ultimately sank this movie for me. Hackman and Hopper both turn in solid performances and the supporting cast is decent, but along with a few inexplicable story turns (we never have the slightest clue why the bitchy character played by Barbara Hershey falls in love with Hackman’s Norman Dale, for instance), the dreadful score drops what could have been a four-star movie to a two. I can only assume that tacking a “modern” (at the time) soundtrack onto an otherwise fairly likeable period piece was contrived to drive movie-goers into the cineplex.
In hindsight the overall effect is regretably and awesomely awful.
April 15, 2008
#4
I found this movie utterly predictable and Dennis Hopper’s performance as the town drunk only tolerable. Gene Hackman is the new high school basketball coach in basketball crazy Hickory, Indiana in 1951. He is a man with a past, although it is not as dark as it initially appears. Hopper plays Shooter, the town drunk whose son is on the seven man team. Despite his sodden brain, Shooter has a superb understanding of the game and Hackman selects him to be his assistant coach. You know immediately that Shooter is going to sober up and become a real coach. The scenes where Hackman is thrown out of the game and Shooter must take over are forced and unrealistic; Hopper is unconvincing as a person stressed out over the combination of alcohol withdrawal and having to take charge.
Even the scene when Hackman is attending a town meeting where the purpose is to decide whether he should be fired lacks a great deal of tension. It is not out of the apparent politeness of the townspeople, there is a lack of passion among all participants. This is supposed to be a town passionate about basketball and a coach passionate about the game.
I was bored throughout the entire movie and struggled to watch it through to the end.
April 15, 2008
#5
The Bottom Line:
Hoosiers might have been considerably more novel when it came out, but like many a good film it has been weakened by its imitators–after 20 years it appears just as formulaic and tired as all the clones it spawned, and thus it’s not very interesting as a film.