My Review of "Air"

Air one of the movies that I was anticipating for 2023 and I think I got what I expected. It's one of those movies that's based off a real story but the end result of the story is so well known that they can't put too many monkey wrenches into the mix. I imagine that they kind of handcuffed when they were trying to figure out how to make this story more sensationalized than what it really was.

It all starts out with the shoe company we all know, Nike. Now this is back in the 1980s so they weren't as big as they are now. Back then they had a struggling basketball department that was on the brink of closing down. It was headed by two guys Rob and Sonny. Rob is the supervisor where Sonny is the brains of the operation.

This movie constantly reminds us about how Nike wasn't the "it" shoe brand that it is today. I guess it's hard for some of us to imagine with the size of the empire that it is today. The top brands for basketball at the time were Converse and Adidas. They needed something to put a spark in Nike's basketball division.

This is when Sonny noticed this kid in North Carolina named Michael Jordan. Again at the time Michael Jordan wasn't the big name that he is today. They had to reiterate this a few times in the movie. At the time he wasn't even in the NBA but there were rumblings about him. Not everyone thought he was going to be a big thing. Sonny however had a feeling that this kid was going to make waves.

The movie is all about what Sonny had to do to woo Michael Jordan to Nike despite Michael's hesitation to join Nike at the time. They use a lot of obvious foreshadowing to help tell the story. Since I lived through those times it was kind of a blast from the past. It was also a reminder that there was a time like this. Those that aren't familiar with the story might have more of a revelation while watching this movie. To me it felt a little like a paint by numbers movie.

I felt that the music that was selected for all of the movie montages were a bit too distracting. Yes they did fit with the movie but in some ways it kind of overshadowed some of the parts of the movie. I would remember some of these old classics and kind of forget what I was watching. They use a lot of these tracks as well. It's a pretty big element of this movie that I thought they could have toned down a bit. They even referenced what one of the songs that they would use later on to explain what the song was about. I thought that was a bit awkward.

For the most part, it is a nice and wholesome movie that we don't get all the time and there are some some smart elements to this movie. I liked how they focused on the family and explained why Nike was different from the other companies. In some ways this was also a loud advertisement for the giant company as well.

Overall, what mattered was that the movie was entertaining. It was but in a weird documentary time of way. They didn't have too much leeway into how to sensationalize this story because we kind of know how it ends. That's one of the problems, we know exactly how it ends so they can't really throw us too many curve balls. I have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. It is enjoyable enough to watch once but you're not going to want to come back to this one over and over again.