He Got Game

New York Magazine David Denby

The movie is a volatile combination of ambitious mythmaking and nasty reality, and like most of Spike Lee’s work, it is also an inextricable combination of good and bad.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Lee uses visual imagination to lift his material into the realms of hopes and dreams.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

As is often the case with Lee, though, the film left me wishing for even more scenes of casual intimacy, still the most powerful way to carry any message.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

Basketball, bold urban landscapes, larger-than-life characters and red-hot visual pyrotechnics are the strong points of Mr. Lee's biggest three-ring circus, not to mention the central presence of Denzel Washington.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

As usual, Lee tries many kinds of stylistic effects and uses wall-to-wall music (by Aaron Copland and Public Enemy); what’s different this time is how personally driven the story feels.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Its best moments are as exuberant and insightful as anything the screen has given us this season, and its passionate concern for believable characters in a recognizably real world offers a refreshing change from the current spate of feel-good fantasies.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Stack

He Got Game seems to cheer for integrity, honesty and hard work while playing up its own cheap thrills.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This is essentially a familiar story told with consummate skill.

Slate David Edelstein

Uneven, ludicrous, but--oh man!--fun to watch.

Newsweek David Ansen

Flaws and all, this may be Spike's most purely enjoyable movie, and his best looking

Salon.com Gary Kamiya

Awkward and often downright silly, He Got Game is nonetheless heartfelt, a moving portrayal of a man who finds his long-lost son through faith, hope and basketball.

Austin Chronicle Russell Smith

For all his superfan's intimacy with b-ball culture, he focuses less on the sport's fascinating mystique than on generic recapitulation of how celebrity culture seduces and devours young minority athletes.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

He got too much movie. That's the scoring total on Spike Lee's He Got Game, which ultimately must be judged a mild disappointment.

Variety Emanuel Levy

Lacking the moral indignation, outrage and militant politics that marked Lee's earlier work, this vibrantly colorful film is a tad too soft at the center, and arguably the director's most mainstream movie.

The New Yorker Bruce Diones

The film is gorgeously shot (slow-motion basketballs spin in the air like Kubrick's spaceships), and the majestic Aaron Copland score helps some of the images to soar, but Lee's screenplay, heavy-handed and didactic, gives the actors little room to convey any real emotions.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Though too long by a good half hour, Lee's latest film packs a genuine emotional punch, largely because its polemical agenda doesn't entirely eclipse the drama.

Film Threat Tom Meek

Lee makes a great looking film, though the soap box message about greed becomes exhausted and overplayed early on.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Coming from a major director like Spike Lee, this is a colossal disappointment. And a surprising one.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

The problem, sadly, is that the whole amounts to less than the sum of its parts.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

There's not a relationship in He Got Game that feels right, especially the one between Washington and Allen, and if that doesn't work, neither does the film.