Hoop Dreams

1994 "An Extraordinary True Story."
8.3| 2h54m| PG-13| en| More Info
Released: 12 September 1994 Released
Producted By: Fine Line Features
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
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Every school day, African-American teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee travel 90 minutes each way from inner-city Chicago to St. Joseph High School in Westchester, Illinois, a predominately white suburban school well-known for the excellence of its basketball program. Gates and Agee dream of NBA stardom, and with the support of their close-knit families, they battle the social and physical obstacles that stand in their way. This acclaimed documentary was shot over the course of five years.

Genre

Documentary

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Director

Steve James

Production Companies

Fine Line Features

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Hoop Dreams Audience Reviews

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.
Borserie it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.
Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.
Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
MartinHafer "Hoop Dreams" follows two Chicago teens, Arthur Agee and William Gates, for 5 years. Both hope to eventually make it to the NBA to play basketball but their more immediate goals are to receive scholarships to top basketball colleges.In the history of documentaries, "Hoop Dreams" is super-important and it helped usher in a newer style and scope of documentaries (such as the many excellent films by ESPN). I do appreciate that. However, after I watched it, I found myself underwhelmed. After all, the film has a current score of 8.3--and that is incredibly high. So, I think I found my expectations were just too high. Additionally, and I know this will perhaps sound mean, but I really didn't find myself that connected with the characters. I was hoping they'd get to live their dreams...but why should I pull for them as opposed to any other young wannabes?
goirish4 The movie Hoop Dreams follows two young basketball players from the projects of Chicago in their quest to one day play NBA basketball. The documentary provides viewers with a gripping plot line and an in depth look into the lives of the two boys on and off the court. The movie does a very good job of communicating not only the stress that the boys feel as they chase a dream that has a miniscule success rate, but also life's hardships the boys have to endure on and off the court as the movie progresses through the boy's four years of high school. Throughout the movie, the directors do a very good job of putting the audience in the boy's shoes, which is the component that makes this movie so good. The filmmakers portray the difficult environment the boys grow up in, both at home and at school. They also do a very good job of documenting the people in Arthur and William's lives that influence them the most. As the movie starts out, the audience is introduced to Arthur Agee and William Gates, two fourteen year old boys with dreams of playing NBA basketball. Arthur lives on the south side of Chicago and William lives in the Cabrini Greens Housing Project. Both are poverty stricken areas without much chance for those raised there to escape the cycle of poverty. The boys are surrounded by lots of crime and gang activity which usually keeps kids their age from escaping the projects. The movie shows scenes of what life is like in the ghetto, from kids playing in rundown parks with inadequate basketball hoops, to Arthur's dad buying drugs from some gang members, both in view of Arthur and the cameras. It is scenes like these that bring the audience to understand the type of harsh environment the boys grew up in. The filmmakers realize that most of their audience cannot relate to the boys and they need to find a way to provide the audience with an understanding of what life is like for the boys. The directors do a very good job of showing the audience what it is like to grow up in the ghetto rather than just tell them. This is one aspect that keeps the audience so involved in the movie. The character development and portrayal in the documentary is exceptional. The filmmakers do a great job of showing the audience how the two main characters mature and grow not only as basketball players, but as young men too. Arthur Agee is described by coaches as a player full of potential, but one who still plays as if he is on the playground and not the basketball court. He does not know how to play "team basketball". However, as the movie progresses, it is enjoyable to watch Arthur leave St. Joe's due to financial problems, but go on to mature from a playground player to a team player, leading Marshall to the state title. William Gates starts out much more mature than Arthur does. He is also recruited by St. Joe's and is billed to be the next Isaiah Thomas by many. William starts on varsity as a freshman and is expected to lead his team to the state title four years in a row. William is also expected to keep his grades up, score an 18 or higher on his ACT, and provide for a new addition to his family, his first born child. Obviously there is a lot of pressure on William to succeed, and watching him progress through the movie is very captivating.The movie may focus on the basketball careers of William and Arthur, but another element which makes the movie so good is the added story line of the two player's families. This allows the filmmakers to show the audience the sacrifice the boy's families have to go through in order to help the boys reach their dreams. Arthur's mom in particular represents this theme. She has to raise her family as a single mother for a couple years when Arthur's dad leaves the family. At one point in time she loses her job due to chronic back pain and has to raise her kids on welfare for a while. She and Arthur's struggles are emotionally charged and very interesting to watch those conflicts play out.Hoop Dreams is an excellent documentary, because of the filmmaker's in depth connections of the boy's dreams and struggles with the movie's audience. The film shows the viewers instead of just simply telling. The documentary is incredibly involving and a joy to watch.
classicalsteve The original project was intended as a 30-minute short film about two young African-American athletes playing in a yard which was supposed to air on PBS. Several years later, the film became a 3-hour feature documentary film, telling a much larger story than even about the two young athletes. Somewhat similar to Ken Burns' "Baseball", "Hoop Dreams" is an exposé of life in Urban America somewhat removed from much of the fair coming out of Hollywood. The ordeals experienced by these real people, both young and older, make plots of "Beverly Hills 90210" seem mundane by comparison. And none of the participants are actors. Aside from the challenge of basketball itself, these people deal with marginal housing and transporting, food and money shortages, and even an unexpected teenage pregnancy. Also, Gates suffers a knee injury in the middle of the season.Although the outer subject is primarily about William Gates and Arthur Agee and their rise as outstanding basketball players in high school and early college, the film also has a context and subtext about American society. This film exposes the many racial divides which still exist in our society in terms of economic and social opportunities. One message which speaks loud and clear is that many of these youngsters who live on Chicago's South Side believe their only route to a better life may be through a basketball hoop, hence the name of the film. I don't think this is something the filmmakers necessarily intended, but it's a reality that becomes very apparent as the film progresses.Both Gates and Agee are highly accomplished athletes yet they struggle with their academics. Gates has an opportunity to enter Marquette University in Wisconsin, and the sports program there decides to court the young player, offering him a full scholarship to the university. They are already sold on his playing ability, but Gates' one hurdle is acquiring a minimum score on the ACT test which Marquette requires for admission. A councilor discussing the problem with Gates who has not yet scored high enough mentions that if he worked on the test as fervently as he works on free throw shots, he could pass the exam. Agee also struggles with his own academics as well, and then something hit me.Gates and Agee are highly intelligent individuals, and this intelligence exudes itself in spades on the basketball court. Neither could have accomplished their athletic goals without a high level of acumen. But this intelligence is not channeled as successfully into other areas of their lives. Whether we mean to or not, our culture often fragments different kinds of activities. Sports, and sometimes the arts, are not often seen as activities requiring high intelligence, and yet being successful in sports requires as much brain power as writing computer code. And you also have to have a well-trained body. Gates' and Agee's surroundings I believe inadvertently conditioned them to believe that the skills they bring to basketball are not the same as the ones in academic studies. And yet, they never question their ability to improve on the court but have problems believing in their abilities in the classroom, which may be one of the points of Hoop Dreams.Ultimately, the filmmakers chose two extraordinarily gifted people. When I say gifted, I don't just mean their abilities as athletes. These two channeled their gifts into playing basketball but given other circumstances they might have been able to channel them into almost anything. The hope is that these individuals, now adults when I write this, would be able to channel their gifts into any field they choose, and it looks like they have. Only a few hundred people out of a society of 300 million will be able to play professional basketball. Gates and Agee have followed dreams outside of basketball and maybe their participation in this film helped them to do that. At the same time, basketball did help them to realize they could realize their dreams, hoops or otherwise.
ThreeThumbsUp This groundbreaking documentary is about as close to cinematic perfect as a film can get.Taking no less than six full years to construct, Hoops Dreams follows the lives of two aspiring basketball players from Chicago's lower-class communities. Starting as freshman, cameras document the lives of Arthur Agee and William Gates as the pair enters their freshman years at St. Joe's High School, a private institution known for its rich basketball tradition.Gates is considered the next great basketball prodigy to come out of St. Joe's, drawing comparisons to NBA Hall of Famer Isaiah Thomas, who graduated from the school in the 1960s.Discovered by a scout mining for talent in one of the city's many forgotten blacktops of the deprived south side, Agee is much less renowned than Gates, but still earns a partial athletic scholarship.Gates immediately makes the varsity team as a freshman and enjoys a generally successful first two years at St. Joe's. Letters from almost every major college basketball program come flooding in as Gates becomes one of the most sought-after young basketball players in the state of Illinois.After one year at St. Joe's, Agee struggles to acclimate to the school's "suburban" culture and transfers to a public high school much closer to his home in the city.With expectations sky-high entering his junior season, Gates suffers a serious knee injury early on, forcing him to miss almost every game while hampering his chances of garnering a major Division I scholarship.With his father aimlessly wandering the streets strung out on drugs and the family struggling to pay even the most basic of bills, life is even more tumultuous for Agee. The low point comes when the electricity in there home is cut off due to excessive missed payments.Despite his personal and academic struggles, Agee begins to flourish on the hardwood, leading his John Marshall High School team to the city championship and a berth in the Illinois State Basketball Tournament. Along the way, the team fastens a few inspiring - and equally thrilling - upsets of some of the state's elite teams.Wearing a perceptible and somewhat clunky brace, Gates returns for his senior season and seems to have lost his explosive first step and fearless attitude. His team is upset early in the playoffs, putting an unceremonious end to Gates's high school career. Despite his struggles and a re-aggravation of his knee injury during an elite off-season basketball camp, Gates manages to receive, and accept, a full-athletic scholarship from Marquette University in Milwaukee.Agee does not have the grades to attend a four-year college directly out of high school, so the budding talent signs with a Junior College in the Midwest before ultimately transferring to Division I Arkansas State.The juxtaposition of the lives of these two young men make for a compelling and authentic look at inner-city life, big-time basketball recruiting, expectations, pressure and the pursuit of a better life through athletics. You don't have to be a basketball fanatic to appreciate this superb piece of filmmaking either. It's simply a masterpiece that will transcend generations.