Critic Reviews
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It was not at all what I expected, which was a stats and sport-heavy “groin strain” of a drama from which I would frequently zone out like I do whenever someone mentions golf. It was the opposite: flash, brash, blowsy, cheesy, bosomy (literally), vulgar, “fun” — and extremely pleased with itself, the drama equivalent of a loud, busty barmaid in a seaside postcard.
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It is a touch superficial, then, but it is a lot of fun. The whole thing is given a VHS/old film veneer, and all that chest hair and bushy moustaches look the part. For a drama about greatness, though, it just doesn’t quite scale the heights.
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If only the show had committed either to OTT comedy – the kind of thing Reilly was born to do – or to serious drama (Rob Morgan, as Johnson’s watchful father, brings a rare dignity to his scenes). But McKay’s attention is on the flashy surface detail rather than the heart of the story.
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The coaching catastrophes offer a compelling throughline to the otherwise limpingly paced season, cohering the massive ensemble and complementing the show’s know-it-all earnestness with its can-you-believe-this raconteurism. ... But for my tastes, McKay has entered, with “Winning Time,” an Aaron Sorkin-esque level of directorial obtrusiveness, where a filmmaker’s tics and indulgences keep calling attention to themselves, distracting from the narrative at hand rather than amplifying it.
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A show that’s mostly just OK. But as someone who loves basketball and admires much of McKay’s earlier work, I view Winning Time as a frustrating missed opportunity.
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The equivalent of missing what should be an easy layup, "Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty" stumbles on the road to greatness, undermining can't-miss subject matter for basketball fans with an uneven, at times farcical tone. Although '80s-style excess clearly accounts for much of the sizzle, this exercise feels like a no-look pass that skips out of bounds.
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The robust ensemble works so well together, especially Brody and Clarke, they almost pull together the snooze-inducing episodes into something watchable. But the series relies on too many surface-level observations on sexism, racism, regret, and Magic’s promiscuity, and wastes these boundless performances.
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What’s revealed to us is usually either banal (the idea that the act of love is like a sport because both have rhythm) or a data-dump that would be better revealed in another way. The soupcon of prurience poured over the top feels — in a way HBO programming rarely does these days — like an attention-getting stand-in for good ideas.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 15 out of 21
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Mixed: 1 out of 21
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Negative: 5 out of 21
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Mar 12, 2022What a snoozefest? How many characters can you have speaking to the camera? And that portrayal of Jerry West is probably actionable. Total b.s.
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Jun 29, 2022