Rest In Peace Bashar “Pop Smoke” Jackson 

Over spring break, I got the opportunity to catch the movie Boogie. Personally, I was very disappointed and was let down due to many reasons. The movie depicts a life of an Asian American high school basketball player that has dreams of going to the NBA. With many hardships and much adversity on the path, he follows his dreams of playing basketball. 

The story takes place in 2019 in New York, where a high schooler named Alfred also known as “Boogie”,  has dreams of playing in the NBA as the main character. The catch of the whole entire movie and its plot is that he is Chinese-American. The movie tries to depict the hardships of an Asian-American who wants to play basketball.  Boogie’s parents also have a bad relationship but stay together due to Chinese superstitions. The movie however did a horrible job on a lot of things giving the film a very below average experience.

To start, the actors. The cast had a wide variety of characters including the beloved rapper who passed away last year, Pop Smoke. The problem with the actors was that they were not the best overall. A lot of the scenes just didn’t seem to feel right due to the acting. Whether the scene was on a basketball court, in the school, or somewhere else in the setting of New York. The basketball scenes were really underwhelming. It really didn’t feel like we were watching basketball games because of the lack of effects used, and the sense of urgency players have on the court. Overall, the acting wasn’t the best. 

Next, the plot was really unrealistic. Boogie, who only has walk-on offers to D1 schools to play basketball, is trying his best to get his first full athletic scholarship. However, his mother doesn’t believe in him and wants him to play in the Chinese Basketball Association instead to pay off the debt his family is in. After one thing and another, the movie just has too many plot twists and drama making the movie just unrealistic and unenjoyable to watch. 

Another thing was that some of the scenes were too cheesy. All the romantic scenes just kept getting cheesier and cheesier. The lines sounded like they were from a cliche rom-com and the bad acting did not help it at all. 

My last problem with the movie was that there was barely even any basketball played at all. Maybe a tenth of the entire film was used for basketball games and scenes. It striked odd because the trailer had a lot of basketball in it and talked all about basketball but the movie showed barely any basketball played and when there was basketball was played, it was seriously underwhelming. 

Overall, I was really disappointed with the movie. The reason I wanted to watch it was because I am an Asian-American who loves basketball so I thought I could relate to it. Turns out, I could relate to very little of it. 

Rating: 2.5/10