Hoosiers

There is not too much to say about this 1986 sports film which has since become somewhat of a “Classic” of the genre.  Gene Hackman portrays a basketball coach who has been given the job of basketball coach for a small town in rural Indiana.  Hackman’s character is hot tempered and is constantly thrown out of games.  This, coupled with his choice of an alcoholic assistant coach (Dennis Hopper) turns many in the town against him.  Predictably, his team goes on to win everything and the audience will go home satisfied.

I have had various people, including Physical Education teachers and coaches, tell me that this is the best basketball film ever made.  Some go further and rate it as the best sports movie ever.  I know of at least two who have shown it to their teams, supposedly as some kind of “inspirational” story.  This is confusing, to say the least;  I cannot fathom how a bad-tempered coach who is ejected from more games than not can serve as a role model for student athletes.  Even worse, Hopper’s character is a hopeless alcoholic and, even though Hackman tells him at the outset that hiring him would be predicated on his giving up alcohol, he still stands by him even though the movie shows him arriving late, totally inebriated, to one of the games.

Inspirational?  I think not.  On a scale of one to ten with ten being best, I rate this movie a three.  Only Hackman and (especially) Hopper’s performances save it from being rated even lower.