The Way Back – 1 star

Look.  I’m not complaining.  I knew what I was getting into when I saw the previews.  Ben Affleck, down and out, drinking beers in the shower, stumbling home from the bar, and then, redemption by way of the call from the old school, “Hey, man, we need a hoops coach.”  All the signs of schmaltz-fest, for which I was totally down.  Also, this movie received an 84% on Rottentomatoes.

While it penetrated the outer-lining of the heart once or twice (though that may have been indigestion), for the most part, this is a bad movie.  Let me count the ways.

*Affleck takes a 1-9 woefully undersized team with no apparent talent and makes them a playoff contender on 1) the pre-existing “motion” offense (he just screams “move” and “set picks”); 2) profanity/appeals to their manhood; 3) a full game, full court press. Come on.

*He has dark secrets that have brought him to rock bottom. We learn about them later, but nowhere near enough.  He just seems like his quiet character in The Town, but he’s not planning a heist.

*His wife, who shares his tragedy, is played by someone who must have said, “Okay, Ben is playing this low-key. I will not be out low-keyed.   I will trump his low-key simmer by being catatonic.”  She succeeds.  Their scenes together are master classes in boredom and diffidence.

*The film is ostensibly about relationships, but not one is established. You have no idea how Affleck ended up with his dead-eyed ex-wife.  The actor who plays his sister could not have been more unlike him.  He establishes one relationship with a player, to whom he says “lead” and ”shoot” and then inexplicably, visits the player’s father, who, straight out of the cliché jar, hates basketball because when he was a star, it did not work out for him.   That scene takes 41 seconds, whereupon Affleck shrugs.

*Affleck does connect a little bit with his algebra teaching assistant coach, who ends up being the worst kind of rat fink, and in the process, reveals the school as heartless and joyless.

*Is the filmic sign of being really down and out drinking beer in the shower? Affleck drinks loads of beer in the shower.  While I’m at it, is beer really the choice of bottom-of-the barrel alcoholics?  It seems like a lot of work.

*The piano music in this picture is as intrusive as a tornado warning. Plink, plink . . . be moved! Be moved!

*His players don’t seem modern. Affleck makes a reference to The White Shadow, which is funny, but it is telling.  These players act as if they came to the court straight from The Disney Channel.

Lastly, and critically, Affleck plays a former high school hoops star yet he in no way, shape or form looks like he ever played hoops, much less was an All-American.  I’m 56 in October and until the pandemic, was still playing hoops every week.  I know what older men in all shapes and sizes who play hoops look like, even if they are not playing basketball but rather, just moving a little and dribbling.  When Affleck gets on the court, he just kind of walks around.  He holds the ball like a cantaloupe.  I do not believe.