Events Transpiring Before, During, and After a High School Basketball Game (2020) User Reviews

Utterly Pointless

[jmcnally100 · 3/10 · 13 October 2021]

This is billed as a comedy, not sure why. It's not funny. It's not anything. There's real story told, no humor, there's no drama. There's no character development no pacing. The basketball game is just a vehicle to bring these non entity's; namely the bored coach, his over enthusiastic assistant (who can't fully engage with the embarrassing part he's playing) and the uninterested team together in a single setting. The cringy dialogue and cardboard cut out characters could just peter out as a mercy and die here but no it gets worse as the director drags more pointless strawmen into this dull lifeless bore.

The subplots involving the drama group and the referees dog are likewise boring, bring nothing to the story and are there for the sake of them. The running 'joke' in the movie is the continual discussion of 'The Matrix' movie. You'd be better off watching that than this pointless waste of time. The only reason it gets a 3/10 from me is the thankfully short running time.

A masterclass in indy film making.

[shimonmor · 9/10 · 7 October 2021]

I'm going to keep my eye on Ted Stenson.

This is a wonderfully unpretentious, subtly humorous, well-paced, well-written indy film that's pure fun.

Directors working with their own material can sometimes allow a film to sprawl or have trouble editing their "baby". But Stenson doesn't overstay his welcome giving us a well fashioned story that doesn't bog down or meander even with a full cast of characters and storylines.

The concept is a simple "slice-of-life" at a high school basketball game without overwrought drama or forced humor but with lots of very wry dialog and dry wit.

This really is a master class on efficient film making and the camera work is steady and unobtrusive (a rarity these days).

Job well done on every front. Worthy of repeat viewings.

Very fun low-key indie with a lazy title.

[rkhen · 8/10 · 30 April 2022]

This fly-on-the-wall high school movie is well worth the time. The relentless satire on a whole basket of classic public high school tropes is wonderfully understated, left for the viewer to remember and appreciate, and I truly did.

The director went for the signature Canadian technique of banning all BIG. DRAMATIC. SCENES from the footage and frowning at "acting", rather than just responding like you would if that really happened. Everyone behaves like the bored, slightly annoyed, doing their best, passive aggressive, vaguely desperate people we all are. This frustrates some viewers who are accustomed to, shall we day, other nations' cinematic conventions, where the drama (or in a comedy, the jokes) are signaled to the audience with fakey delivery that no-one would tolerate in real life.

And it really works here. A favourite example: after the coach tries to get the team to adopt a gung-ho jock attitude, he's told, "But this is just a high school basketball team." And another player adds, "In Calgary."

That zinger is so many levels deep it kept me laughing for several minutes. The fact that the actors half-mumbled it, like actual real-life teenagers, was the dunk.

This was something I turned on just because it was there, and ended up ignoring everything else I had to do tonight to watch all the way through. The title needs work, but if you ever went to high school, and like brilliant, genre-busting comedy -- the kind that doesn't elicit many "haw-haw" fits but keeps you smiling from start to finish -- this is for you.