Background: There's only one real story here, and that's actor Haley Joel Osment. This movie is the only credit to writer/director Rusty Gorman's name. Other stars include Ryan Merriman (whose main credits are lousy horror movies) and Danielle Panabaker (whose main credits are lousy horror movies). Haley Joel Osment was once on top of the world though. He was one of the hottest kid actors on the scene for a while, but we all know that it can be hard for kid stars to find work once the cute wears off. He stole the show in movies like The Sixth Sense and Pay It Forward. I may not like either of these movies very much, but a hell of a lot of people did. By the time Secondhand Lions rolled around, you could see the writing on the wall for Osment's career. Since then, his roles have dropped off dramatically, appearing in the video game series Kingdom Hearts (a mashup of the Final Fantasy games with Disney characters) and precious few other things. His only major movie role of the past 8 years since Secondhand Lions was this, but why did he choose it?
This movie was screened at many film festivals, including Cannes, though it never saw an official release in theaters. Weirdly, Wikipedia lists the cast as including Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson as a character called "The Night Time". but he's nowhere to be found.
Plot: The phrase I keep seeing about this movie in the various press kits still floating around the internet is "Hoosiers with a dark edge". It's not an unjust comparison, but there's a lot of other junk thrown in there.Sure, the core of the movie is about an Indiana high school basketball team, The Giants, and their quest to the state championship. It's the side garbage that brings this movie crashing to the ground at a meteoric pace. To set it up, Haley Joel Osment is Robert Garland, who just goes by Gar. His friend is Matt Morrison, top scorer of the basketball team. The movie opens with Gar and Morrison speeding down the highway and getting pulled over The cop recognizes Morrison and says "Shouldn't you be at the game?" and escorts them instead of ticketing him. The untouchable nature of the star player is touched on once or twice more throughout the movie, but not often enough to really matter.
The meat of the plot comes from Matt's older brother. He's fresh out of jail, and hatching a fresh crime. He wants to hire Matt to help him steal some money from a drug dealer. Things, of course go wrong because the guy sees Matt without his mask on. He took it off because it smelled bad. Those kinds of realistic situations and decisions are the real meat and potatoes of Home Of The Giants. Two people with no criminal past hop into a top tier crime with little reservation. They leave with only $400.
After the crime, Matt starts getting messages from the man he took the money from. He gets mysterious calls and letters, all of which freak him out. Turns out, the guy is after him hard. He chases Matt, and Gar since he's with him. Why? Because Matt's brother cut off the dude's finger looking for more money. He demands Matt doesn't play in the big game.
Turns out, the whole thing was a scam. The guy turns out to be in cahoots with Matt's brother, never even lost the finger. Matt's brother just has money riding on the game and wants Matt to throw it. Gar is onto the plan though, he gets to the big game to tell Matt. He enters the game in the second half and the Giants win.
There's a whole romantic subplot with Gar and a girl that reads the school paper he writes for, but the movie doesn't get to spend enough time on that plot to make it at all meaningful. Shame really, as it could have been a lot more interesting
Why Was It Forgotten? Allow me to give you a little look behind the curtain, a little inside baseball from The Depths, I'm going to type a snippet of my notes on this movie verbatim. "Gar makes decisions that don't make sense - In fact every one does." The whole plot of two straight laced kids committing armed robbery because Matt wanted to help his brother and Gar wanted to help Matt. These are all things that would never ever happen. Completely nonsensical characters make for a tough watch.
One more peak behind the curtain: I wrote that at what I thought was about an hour into the movie, but was actually about 20 minutes. The movie is glacially paced. Shots linger for what may only be a second or two too long, but it's poor editing like this that can just destroy the way a film moves along.
What Went Right? The film has a lot of big ideas. It tries to be a commentary on jock culture and on high school in general. When the movie focusses on these things, it's not bad. It doesn't say anything new, but it never really gets the chance to. There's one sequence where Matt tries to get kicked off the team as a way of getting out of the big game that could be interesting, but doesn't have time to say to what it wants to say because it gets lost in the rest of the movie.
Way too much of the movie revolves around the whole crime plot, which is just pure story. A film like this thrives on the ability to relate the characters, and when it delves into the crime plot, all realism is lost. Not that the characters are too well drawn in the first place, but it doesn't help.
So why did Haley Joel Osment choose this role? That's a question only he can answer. There is a scene that uses The Flaming Lips' Yeah Yeah Yeah Song, and that's cool.
Verdict: I don't like sports movies usually, and I would have like it more if it were a sports movie
Score: 30%
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