My Review of "Champions"

Champions is a sports related movie that came out in 2023. I'm a sucker for inspiring sports movies even if they are cheesy. This movie looked like a cut and paste of the Mighty Ducks so I wanted to give it a try. After watching it, I realized it has similarities but it is quite different as well.

The movie starts off with a basketball game. That's the sport we're going to be tackling for this one. We get introduced to Marcus, an assistant coach to a very minor league basketball team. He has high hopes to coach in the NBA but they never really provide any real credentials as to why he would deserve to. There's a lot of lofty things that happen in this movie that you kind of have to put away in the back of your mind.

He gets into a tussle with the head coach at a game and this escalates quickly. Marcus pushes the head coach down to the ground and eventually gets fired. Distraught over what had happened Marcus goes to the bar and buries his sorrows with alcohol. Afterwards he decides to drive home and gets into an accident.

Eventually he gets arrested and goes to court. The judge decides to give him some leniency because he's a basketball coach for some reason. They give him 90 days of community service. All he has to do is coach a team of special Olympian basketball players.

At first Marcus believes that this is going to be an impossibility. You know the trope they all soon eventually become a family. It's exactly what you think the movie is going to be. That's a good and a bad thing. Bad for all the things you expect but good for all the things you expect as well. It's a highly predictable movie that you watch more for comfort than as artistic cinema.

I liked the fact that they give each of the characters enough time to shine. They're able to break some stereotypes of what the general public understand of people of different abilities. Fortunately they don't go full blown into this direction. The movie focuses more on the individual characters and how they're succeeding in life rather then their difficulties.

There's no need for special effects and I liked that they made a lot of the basketball scenes fairly realistic. We don't have the characters making dunks or having crazy skills that isn't expected of them. The sole purpose of this time isn't to win but to understand what is important in their lives. It makes one do a little self reflection as to what makes themselves happy.

There are of course a ton of things you have to put out of your head in this movie. One of the major things I couldn't quite get over was how Marcus was surviving the 90 days. He was fired from his job and he's doing community service. Somehow he still has money to go out to eat and pay rent at a really nice apartment. I don't understand how money works in this world but I kind of want to live there.

Overall, this is a comfort movie. It aims at showing the heart of each of the characters rather than pushing a deep story. You can tell it's a really low budget film and they did a pretty good job with what was available to them. I was actually surprised they had licensed music in the movie. I have to give this movie a 5.5 out of 10. It is certainly watchable and a very family friendly movie. I don't see myself rewatching it but I'm glad I saw it the one time.