Amateur is a 2018 drama about a young basketball player who struggles to fit in with his new team.
I’m going to write ‘sports drama’ and odds are, you’ve already tuned out a little bit, knowing exactly what that means. The genre is almost always unwaveringly predictable, following a specific set of landmarks that define everything about them. Still, they are like sugary bowls of kid’s cereal that satisfy like nothing else and get consumed mostly because of just that. We want to feel good and that’s just what these movies do. With Ryan Koo‘s latest Amateur, the sport is basketball and the story is the same, even with some good performances and an earnest story. Just add milk.
Inner city fourteen-year-old Terron Forte (Michael Rainey Jr.) is good on the court. He’s not quite a phenom, but handles the ball incredibly well and can shoot from nearly anywhere. Problem is, he’s stuck on a losing team with parents who struggle to make ends meet, his mother Nia (Sharon Leal) wanting him to use his brain as well as his body and his father Vince (Brian White) a hardcore gamer who pushes for excellence. When Terron gets an opportunity to transfer to a prep school and play on a high school team from a smooth-talking Coach Gaines (Josh Charles), even offering special classes to help his learning disability (he’s diagnosed with dyscalculia – ‘number blindness’), it’s too good to pass up. However, once he’s there, it’s not as easy as he thought.
Amateur is a like a page out of a basic playbook, the story peppered with all the regulars, the hurdles authentic but not all that high. Terron is a popular and star-in-the-making kid at his old school, but a young nobody on the new one where the boys are bigger, faster, and better with all of them putting him through the ringer at first, making it somewhat hard to get along. Along the way we get training montages and pranks, bullying and militant coaching to harden the boy. Moreover, he also discovers that the learning the school promised is a little different than promised, and the players on the team are a collection of guys from all over who were told the same thing.
The film sort of dances about on its themes, sometimes putting emphasis on the condition and then abandoning it for a bit then moving on to his need to build trust with this teammates. His father has issues as well, but it’s mostly superficial, played for moments intended to give a little extra drama. Coach Gaines does his best to help but has other needs, even with some obvious legal snags with things out of the back of a van that young Terron doesn’t recognize has such. These are all expected and the film only gives them just enough attention in building a conventional story plotted out to hit all the hot points.
Still, even as it plays close to the chest, the formula works as it intends. There’s a strange lack of momentum though, the energy kept low and the soundtrack a collection of basic beats that do little to really pump this up like it should be. Rainey Jr. is well cast and is fun to watch and the team, despite being fairly obvious archetypes, are solid as well. The movie is far too simple though, the plays and action fundamental to a degree to make this anything significant beyond a night’s run.