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White Men Can’t Jump (1992) is widely considered one of the best sports movies of all time. It doesn’t follow the usual sports movie formula – it’s funny and its protagonists are very likeable, despite being significantly less than honest, heavily flawed people.
It also features (for its time) frank and open conversations about race. Rotten Tomatoes called it “slam-dunkingly satisfying”. I don’t know what that means, but this movie still holds up.
There are good sports movies and there are bad sports movies and there are far too many Air Bud movies. But what’s the best?Credit: Aresna Villanueva
So of course it’s been remade. Are Sinqua Walls and Jack Harlow as charismatic in the new version as Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson were in the original? I have no idea, but we are overdue a great sports movie. There hasn’t been a really good one since The Pride of the Yankees in 1948.
Wait, that doesn’t sound right.
(Checks notes.)
Yep, that’s what my notes say. Weird.
(Throws out notes, watches some sports movies released after 1948.)
“If you build it, he will come.” Ray Liotta and Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams.
A good sports movie is hard to get right, which might be why a lot of them rely on a formula. Unlikely winners win the game – or they learn something that helps them win something that is, believe it or not, more important than the game. And if it all comes together, you’ll need a box of tissues and some benzos because you are going to be a mess afterwards.
By my estimation, baseball movies pull this off the best. There’s a lot more of them and they work the hardest at it.
Woody Harrelson and Rosie Perez in the original (and the best) White Men Can’t Jump.
In films like Field of Dreams (1989) and The Natural (1984), baseball is steeped in classic American virtue. It represents the best of America, a tribute to the country’s mythologised greatness. A lot of these movies conveniently erase various aspects of America’s past and present in order to offer a satisfying vision of how the country likes to see itself.
Some of this stuff is hard to watch today. Sometimes you can remove that part of your brain that judges a movie based on 2023 standards. Sometimes you can’t.
42 (2013), a good movie about how Jackie Robinson became the first Black player in major league baseball, leans into a white perspective, allowing America to pat itself on the back for finally being on the right side of history.
A League of Their Own (1992) has a patronising moment when a Black woman, not even allowed to enter the park, throws the ball hard and impresses the white players. But it’s still a really funny and heartwarming movie. These white women are helping fight the Nazis the only way they know how – by playing baseball. Those are high stakes.
There are good baseball movies for the kids – The Sandlot (1993) – and great comedies – Major League (1989), Bull Durham (1988), The Bad News Bears (1976).
And it’s not all corn fields and apple pie.
(Checks notes, finds reminder to eat nothing but apple pie for one week.)
Movies like Moneyball (2011) and Eight Men Out (1988) show, through the sport, how people can be let down by narrow thinking and greed.
Even though they, like baseball movies, focus mainly on white people, American football movies don’t seem to loom as large in the pantheon of great sports movies. Partially because they can’t seem to cleanly romanticise America as well as the baseball movies can, and partially because I just don’t like them as much.
Any Given Sunday (1999), Rudy (1993), We Are Marshall (2006). I remember them being good. Remember the Titans (2000) was decent. It’s got a typical white people and black people learn to get along story, but Denzel Washington is absolutely incredible (“Who’s. Your. Daddy.“).
Friday Night Lights (2004) launched an unbelievably good TV show. And if you want to consider Jerry Maguire (1996) a football movie, that is still really good (aside from its weird, unprovoked attack on jazz). I’m tempted to believe that The Longest Yard (1974) and North Dallas Forty (1979) hold up because they were made in the ’70s, the best American movie decade. But The Program (1993)? I don’t know…
The Blind Side: sports film or white saviour film?
I did make the mistake of rewatching The Blind Side (2009). It’s a true story and I’m glad that family adopted that kid and I hope he turned out all right. But as a movie, it’s patronising and preposterous. Lots of white saviour stuff happening.
(Checks notes, finds reminder to try being white saved by white saviour before criticising it.)
What often gets lost in the discussion of football movies, of course, is that the best football movie is The Waterboy (1998). There’s some uncomfortable stuff in it, but it is still hilarious.
Basketball movies don’t get nearly the same amount of respect as baseball and football movies, arguably because they show America as it is, rather than as it sees itself. Also, unlike the “best” baseball and football movies, basketball movies generally have…
(Checks notes.)
… Black people in them.
Are sports movie fans who prefer baseball and football movies raging bigots?
(Checks notes, finds sliding scale of raging bigotry.)
Well, maybe not raging.
Samuel L Jackson in Coach Carter, underrated god-tier sports film.
This is part of the reason I’ve always gravitated towards basketball movies. They feel a bit more complicated. And they’re not Whites Only.
The other part is that I actually like basketball. I haven’t cared about football since the Super Bowl Shuffle and baseball hasn’t interested me since they “stopped” cheating.
Everyone loves Hoosiers (1986) and I would never speak ill of a Gene Hackman movie. But Coach Carter (2005) deserves a seat at the best sports movie table. In it, Sam Jackson uses unconventional methods to teach his team to be successful at life, rather than just basketball. Back in 2005, it treated very seriously the depressing statistics about young Black men ending up in prison.
It’s a little cheesy and you can see the lessons coming from a mile away. And yet… when those kids showed Coach Carter how badly they wanted to do well in school… it hit me right in the gut and I…
(Checks notes.)
… cried like a baby.
So which sport has the best movies? Too hard to say. No one sport really dominates.
For every He Got Game (1998), there’s an Eddie (1996) or an Air Bud (1997).
For every Bull Durham, there’s an Ed (1996) or an Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch (2002).
For every Friday Night Lights, there’s an Edward Scissorhands (1990) or an Air Bud: Golden Receiver (1998).
(Checks notes, finds love letter to real Air Bud.)
(Decides to stop checking notes.)
Air Bud, there are lots of them.
(Begins to question entire premise of article.)
Ultimately, Field of Dreams best exemplifies the power of sports movies. From a Mainly White perspective, it juxtaposes the messiness of American political history and the “purity” of baseball. It’s an extremely quaint and, given today’s politics, preposterous position. A school board in Iowa is defending literary freedom (today, they would be defending the freedom to ban every book right to hell). The only Black person in the movie, James Earl Jones, gives a speech about how baseball reminds us of what was good about America and could be again – in front of an all white team of players from the 1920s, before Black people were allowed to play in the major leagues.
But then… Kevin Costner notices that a young version of his father is one of the old-timey players… and he… oh God… he asks his father to have that game of catch they never got to have when he was alive.
And I was a mess. Complete breakdown. Drawing the shades. Wailing. Hugging pillow. Softly singing Total Eclipse of the Heart.
There are other good sports movies. Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Miracle (2004), The Wrestler (2008), Slap Shot (1977), Caddyshack (1980), Raging Bull (1980), Rocky (1976), I, Tonya (2017), Talladega Nights (2006), The Karate Kid (1984), The Hustler (1961), The Damned United (2009), Warrior (2011), Blue Crush (2002).
But at the end of the day, the best sports movie is…
(Checks notes.)
Happy Gilmore (1996).
(Rereads notes, turns pages to see if anything else was written.)
It’s not even a conversation.
Nick Bhasin’s debut novel I Look Forward to Hearing from You will be published by Penguin Random House Australia on June 13.
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