BEFORE: It was just a three-day trip, but I'm already having trouble getting back in the swing of things in NYC - though we did miss the three days where the city was filled with smoke from burning Canadian wildfires, so that's something. Gee, and I was kind of looking forward to finding out what BBQ flavored air tasted like. Oh, well, maybe next time.
Ben Affleck AND Matt Damon carry over from "School Ties".
THE PLOT: Follows the history of shoe salesman Sonny Vaccaro, and how he led Nike in its pursuit of the greatest athlete in the history of basketball, Michael Jordan.
AFTER: It's not that this is a terrible movie, it's just a terrible IDEA for a movie, and then for some reason somebody followed through and actually made it. There should have been some check in the system that prevented things from ever getting that far. Like didn't anybody have the nerve to speak up and say, "Why would anybody be interested in this story?" very early in the process, and then when there was no constructive answer, the meeting would be over and everybody would go home, or maybe they'd move on to the next project to consider.
This is really who we want to make a movie about, the low-level managers at Nike Inc. who worked on endorsements from college players and were largely unsung for their efforts. There was a valid reason why we never knew who these people were, because in the grand scheme of things, their work just wasn't that important, 99% of the time. I'm still not sure it was even that important for the 1% of the time, which is when they signed Michael Jordan to a contract. So what? Who cares? Are we going to make a movie about that time that they changed the formula for Coke, then brought back the original as "Coke Classic" a few months later? Or the invention of the Egg McMuffin? Actually, I'd probably be MORE interested in a movie about the guy who invented the Egg McMuffin, over the guy who signed Jordan to a shoe contract.
Admittedly, there are one or two small details about the deal that I find moderately interesting - like the fact that the NBA didn't allow sneakers to have THAT much color, they had to be mostly white or the player would end up paying a fine - and Nike paid the fines for Jordan to wear his very red sneakers, which was a great publicity stunt. And...well, no, really that's it, it's the only thing I found interesting about the whole movie. Think about it - if you had to name the notable or interesting moments in Michael Jordan's life, would the signing of his Nike contract even crack the top ten?
I did like that the film poked fun at Phil Knight, because the guy is a right bastard, from everything that I've heard about him. I used to work for an animation company in Portland, which was headed by Will Vinton, a pioneer in the claymation technique - when Vinton's company was in need of money, Phil Knight stepped in and offered financing, but also a board to oversee the company, and that board ended up voting Will Vinton out of his own company. Who's in charge of that company right now? Well, it's Phil Knight's son, what an amazing coincidence... You don't suppose Phil Knight kicked a respected animation director out of his own company just so his own son could have an executive position, do you? Hmmmm......
Knight is portrayed here as an ambitious businessman, but also as someone who doesn't know how to take his company to the next level, because it turns out that Buddhist philosophy and a 10-point plan of useless sayings like "Always be on offense" didn't seem to drag his sneaker company out of fifth place in the market. No, apparently it took a mid-level executive thinking outside the box, breaking the rules and letting the player put his own name on the sneaker to turn Nike into a billion-dollar sneaker company - and somehow that guy, Sonny Vaccaro, could see the future because he not only predicted that Michael Jordan would be the most successful player of all time, he also correctly predicted that once on top, the world would try to bring Jordan down, and he'd have to re-invent himself as a baseball player and then an NBA team owner just to survive in this tough modern world. Man, what a visionary, but isn't it impossible that anyone could have predicted all that in montage form, before it happened?
Give me a break - it was one contract that got signed, and Vaccaro and Nike got incredibly lucky. Though I suppose "lucky" depends on your point of view - even though Nike sold billions of dollars worth of Air Jordans, they had to concede that MJ would get a royalty on every paid sold, and that alone added up to a few hundred million over the years. Now this is quite common, as anybody who does endorsement deals or watches "Shark Tank" knows, royalties are where it's at - but apparently it wasn't always that way.
Still, I have to judge this film as "mostly useless" - wasn't it just in theaters two months ago, in April? It must have done terrible to already be streaming on AmazonPrime, or maybe that was always part of the plan. These days it's so hard to tell. Looks like it fell just short of breaking even at the box office, it grossed $89 million but it cost $90 million to make. I suppose that counts as a failure these days, if your movie doesn't make a billion and be declared the latest film to "save Hollywood" then you might just as well not bother, and stream it for free two months later. I mean, come on, what's the freaking point? (EDIT: Ah, it looks like streaming on Amazon Prime was always part of the plan, it was the theatrical release that got added at the last minute because the film tested higher than anticipated.)
The film opens with a montage of the most ridiculous things about the 1980's, from Cabbage Patch dolls to "Knight Rider" to Jane Fonda's workout videos. Sure, they nailed it, I know because I was there for all of it, but I just wonder why anybody would want to relive all of that. It was an extremely silly time.
Also starring Jason Bateman (last seen in "Hit and Run"), Chris Messina (last seen in "Zeroville"), Viola Davis (last seen in "The Unforgivable"), Julius Tennon (last seen in "Faster"), Damian Delano Young, Chris Tucker (last seen in "Silver Linings Playbook"), Matthew Maher (last heard in "My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea"), Gustaf Skarsgard (last seen in "The Way Back"), Barbara Sukowa (last seen in "White Noise"), Jay Mohr (last seen in "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone"), Joel Gretsch (last seen in "Are You Here"), Michael O'Neill (last seen in "Ghost Story"), Marlon Wayans (last seen in "Venus and Serena"), Asanté Deshon, Billy Smith (last seen in "Flag Day"), Al Madrigal (last seen in "Unplugging"), Jackson Damon (last seen in "Thoroughbreds"), Dan Bucatinsky (last seen in "Under the Tuscan Sun"), Jessica Green, Gabrielle Bourne, Joshua Funk (last seen in "The Starling"), Andy Hirsch, Tami Jordan, Jeff Cook, Albert Stroth, Mackenzie Rayne, Jerry Plummer.
with archive footage of Arthur Ashe (last seen in "McEnroe"), Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), Prince Charles (ditto), Princess Diana (ditto), Larry Bird, Bono (last heard in "Sing 2"), Geraldine Ferraro (last seen in "Where's My Roy Cohn?"), Nancy Reagan (ditto), Ronald Reagan (ditto), Jane Fonda (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), David Hasselhoff (last seen in "Downhill"), Hulk Hogan, Magic Johnson (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"), Deloris Jordan, Michael Jordan (last seen in "Say Hey, Willie Mays"), Simon Le Bon (last seen in "Under the Volcano"), Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels, George Michael (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Andrew Ridgeley (ditto), Jason "Jam Master Jay" Mizell, Walter Mondale (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), Eddie Murphy (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Bill Murray (last seen in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Barack Obama (last seen in "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away"), Dolly Parton (last seen in "Tina"), Clara Peller, Harold Ramis (last seen in "The Last Kiss"), Mary Lou Retton, Joseph "Run" Simmons, Sylvester Stallone (last seen in "The Queen of Versailles"), Sting (last seen in "Count Me In"), Mr. T (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie")
RATING: 4 out of 10 boxes of Wheaties
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