Other Media Review

Smart Bitches Movie Matinee: Love & Basketball

Sarah: One of the reasons we started this feature was to both explore romantic comedies, a film genre that isn’t appearing in theatres much at all anymore, and to explore the films we love to see if they still hold up. With this film, so many people I know and respect adore this movie that I know it should be very good.

“Can I play?”

“You nice?”

Redheadedgirl: “I told you I was nice! I’m gonna be the first girl in the NBA!” I love her already.

Sarah: I could have started a lot of friendships that way.

Redheadedgirl: A mayflower moving truck! That brought back a bunch of childhood memories and I’m not sure why.

Sarah: I’d also appreciate Google:Play not buffering every three minutes. (Autocorrect just tried to accuse Google:Play of “buggering,” which is not entirely incorrect.)

I love how spare the storytelling is with one look, or one pan of the camera across a room telling a lot.

And then there’s the spare single expression acting of Alfrie Woodard – and Gabrielle Union, and Omar Epps, and ok, everyone in the cast is terrific.

“I don’t like flowers. How bout Twinkies?”

I love this person. She knows where she is going in life in every way. I wish I had that much knowledge of myself when I was her age.

Quincy and Monica as kids

Redheadedgirl: Hey it is important to get your post-sports career prospects sorted out. These family dynamics are fascinating!

HA she’s fake sports nerding him! Twinkies are way better than flowers, it’s true.

CarrieS: I kinda love their 2 minute long childhood romance.

Sarah: Me, too!

Redheadedgirl: “You stupid, and your dad plays for the worst team in the NBA!” OUCH. That was a very short-lived romance.

CarrieS: “You’d be real pretty if you’d do something with your hair.” Alfrie, ma’am, the girl is played by Sanaa Lathan. She’s pretty.

Redheadedgirl: I think these scenes of Lena doing Monica’s hair are my favorite so far.

CarrieS: I know I should be furious with the mom for persistently ignoring how important basketball is to her daughter but it’s impossible for me to feel that hostile to someone who brings a Toni Morrison book to a game.

I love all the themes of family relationships – the sisters, and the relationships between husbands and wives and parents and kids.

Redheadedgirl: I do note that his mama is warning him about these “fast-ass girls” but not telling him to be respectful of them.

It is awful to be able to hear your parents have having a knockdown drag out fight when you want to sleep. Luckily, he lives in this word where you can just hop out your window. And crashing on her floor has happened so much that they have a routine. That’s making my heart sad.

Sarah: Oh, my gosh, and the scenes with no dialogue. She lets him sleep on the floor of her room because his parents are fighting, and clearly that’s happened before so it’s no big deal and oh my heart just got all smushy.

Wordless deep understanding that cuts under all the bickery BS conversations. This movie is going to slice my heart nine times before it’s over, huh?

Redheadedgirl: This dance is SO very 80s. (Also that dress shows off Monica’s arms to PERFECTION holy shit) This date is so awkward!

CarrieS: GIRL! DO NOT LIE ON THE GRASS IN THAT WHITE DRESS! Luckily it has magic movie powers and remains spotless, while I cannot wear any item of clothing without staining it with some substance or other within seconds.

Redheadedgirl: Q gives this whole body gesture when she’s talking about how her college boy date was kissing on her, and I just love gestures like that convey so much conflicted emotion.

Sarah: Oh my gosh, the scene where she takes the top of her dress off, and she’s wearing pearls and he’s wearing his number on a chain… how much does that one shot contain.

(Answer: MULTITUDES.)

A teenage Quincy with his shirt open and his basketball number on a chain. Monica is in a white dress and pearls.

CarrieS: College. Aww they are so cute, icing each other post practice!

Redheadedgirl: HIS AND HERS ICING. That’s love.

CarrieS: Strip basketball is clearly the best kind.

This movie feels like it was just made yesterday. Not dated at all.

Sarah: You’re so right. This could be yesterday. Or tomorrow. It’s got this weird almost timeless sense of story and emotion – even with the fashion and the music that’s so specifically dated.

And I love the contrast between the first-time scene and the strip-ball scene where they are so comfortable with themselves, with each other, with their bodies… it’s so many layers of intimacy in one game. BIG HAPPY SIGH is what I’m saying here.

CarrieS: “When I ignore you – then you worry.” Great line. Great little scene.

Oh God that break-up scene. Not cool, dude. Not cool.

Sarah: My insides are burning from that scene. Oh, gosh. Ow.

CarrieS: I had no idea that Women’s Basketball was so big in Europe, that’s awesome!

Sarah: Isn’t that part cool? I loved going to basketball games when I was an exchange student. American athletes were a huge deal when I was there – and that was 1991 and 1996. So a bit before this was made, but totally real.

I do have to say, though, she’s in Spain seven months, playing on a team and living in Barcelona, and she doesn’t know enough Spanish to get the gist of a coach’s speech? That seems odd to me, but I’m a full-on language nerd (ask me about how I tried to learn Hawaiian, Norwegian, and then Icelandic greetings using Mango on the same evening!).

Redheadedgirl: Coaches sound the same in all languages.

CarrieS: Omar’s dad is such a shitty guy but he’s such a good dad. “How come you can’t be the man you tried to make me?” Welcome to parenting, honey.

Redheadedgirl: Okay, Mr. Big Shot, you say that Q’s mom was 19 when she got pregnant, and “he wasn’t ready for marriage” but HEY GUESS WHAT ASSWIPE. It’s 19 years later. You’ve had some time to mature. You know, IF YOU WANTED TO.

Sarah: That hit me square in all the parenting feels. Ouuuuuch.

CarrieS: Monica looks smoking hot in that red shirt.

Sarah: Sanaa Lathan’s deltoids. Mercy. I have envy.

CarrieS: I will be so disappointed if Tyra doesn’t smize at least once.

Redheadedgirl: TYRA! We were all rooting for you! (That waggle of the engagement ring is a bit much…)

CarrieS: Jeez Tyra, why don’t you just pee on him already?

Quincy's fiancee waving her engagement ring around

Sarah: I also have envy of her family kitchen, too, if I’m being honest.

CarrieS: “Find out where they’re registered and send them a gift.” I can’t help it, I just love her even though she’s been so horribly unaccepting of her daughter. It’s like she wants to be a great mom, but she can’t see the daughter that she actually has, so she doesn’t know how to parent her and meanwhile Monica doesn’t recognize the contributions of her mom. As a stay-at-home mom I think that character represents the fears that a lot of stay at home moms have about being condescended to or unappreciated.

But I also like the hope they represent that they can get to know each other as adults. I love Mom telling Monica that the thing that most drove her crazy about her daughter was also the thing she most admired and envied.

Sarah: They’re both so convinced that the other is ashamed of them. And they don’t understand each other at all.

Redheadedgirl: This fight has been a long time in coming. Mothers and expectations and all of it.

CarrieS: Hey Quincy, we have matching knee scars! Represent!

Redheadedgirl: Bro, you fucked up your knee by grandstanding? Honestly. At least when I tore my ACL I was trying to do an actual thing, not hanging off a basket for no reason.

CarrieS: I’m unclear on how Monica is the bad guy begging for Quincy’s love after what he did to her in college. Having to leave at 11 on one night does not equal not being there for someone.

ERMEEGARD THAT BABBY THO

Redheadedgirl: WRIGHT-MCCALL BABY “Go mommy!” SO CUTE.

That was ADORABLE. I liked the complicated parental relationships, and the parts where your high school/college relationships are messy and no one is really their best self (which is fine, honestly- this is part of growing up) and how changes to yourself and your life can make those relationships functional.

Quincy and his daughter watching Monica playing basketball

CarrieS: I would give this movie an A but I am waffling a bit because he’s such an asshole to her in college and somehow that gets flipped around as though she was the asshole even though she was as considerate of him as she could possibly be.

Sarah: I am with you exactly. There’s a lot of water, so to speak, under that bridge and I wanted more about how they’d… I don’t know, work out the absence and resentments? Figure out all the discord?

Though the ending made it clear that they did.

And holy wow. I’m just blown away by Gina Prince-Blythewood’s writing and directing. All the subtle touches in different scenes, like Omar Epps wearing a backwards cap in the end, and of course it’s a USC cap, pointing behind him while he’s looking across the yard at her darkened window.

And the way their relationship reflected and contradicted the roles they played in their families, and their parents’ marriages. I get why people love this film – you can watch it fifty times, I bet, and see more details each time, catch nuances that reveal themselves with familiarity – like their relationship.

Seriously, I have no objectivity at this moment. I’m sprawled on the floor mentally rolling in squee. Why the hell did I wait so long to see that movie?

CarrieS: I agree about rewatching! Even on a single watch, I found myself watching the movie in a lot of different ways. As the stay-at-home mom of an athletic daughter, I watched it through the lens of a parent. I watched it as a romance. I watched it as a coming of age story. There’s so many angles to see it from.

The ending though – every time I think about it I get more and more angry. He treated her like shit during that break up. I truly don’t think she did anything to deserve it, and I DO think she was there for him. So after all her growth, to see her begging for his heart while he acts like he has the high ground just made me furious.

Which would not stop me from watching the movie 500 more times, because all of it was so good except that one thing.

Redheadedgirl: The soundtrack to this movie is PERFECT.

Also Omar Epps is a fine looking dude.

For those who watched the movie, what did you think? Was Quincy being a total jerk? Was he worthy of Monica? Let us know in the comments!

Add Your Comment →

  1. Gennie says:

    I’ve adored this movie since i first saw it. Thanks for bringing it to the attention of others!

  2. Janine says:

    Somehow I had never seen this movie–it was great!

    I was poking around the Internets after I saw it and found this great oral history: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/16/love-and-basketball-oral-history_n_7572140.html Nothing too scandalous, but it was fun to read about the process of making the movie. I had no idea that Sanaa Lathan was a total basketball novice before she was cast.

  3. CelineB says:

    I love this movie so much. I agree that Quincy should’ve done some repenting, but I still adore it. I choke up every time Monica tells him she’s loved him since she was 11 and ‘that shit just won’t go away’. Now I’m thinking how great it would have been if Quincy was saying that to Monica.

    I wish Gina Prince-Blythewood had more opportunities in Hollywood. I read an article about how women directors average many more years between films than male directors and I’m sure it’s even harder for African-American women. Right now she and her husband are doing the series Shots Fired with Sanaa Lathan and the first episode was very good.

  4. Pamala says:

    I totally agree with the assessment you ladies have laid out! This is one of my favorite movies and Quincy definitely was an ass to her during the college break up and the only reason I didn’t rage quit in disgust is because it’s REALISTIC, sadly 🙁

    I think I already mentioned my dismay about the director not getting ANY other opportunities after this movie and what a damn shame that was. I’m glad to see her at the helm of Shots Fired and hope things are on the upswing for such a talented artist.

    Thanks for the review 🙂

  5. Erika Kelly says:

    I’ve seen this movie countless times–I love it so much. I love Omar, I love Sanaa! I do get where Quincy’s coming from in college. I thought Gina did an excellent job of setting up Q’s father as this huge influence in his life. His dad schooled him hard on how a man is supposed to behave. So to have him turn out to be such a total two-faced liar is shattering to Q’s entire world view. And there’s really only one person he could talk to about it who’ll get it, and she chooses to honor curfew so she gets a chance to play ball. So he’d already felt betrayed by his dad–the man he’d put on a pedestal, and then to have his girlfriend–his heart–betray him, too…it was too much. Whether or not Monica actually failed him wasn’t the point-it was where Q was at the time. He was too messed up to think clearly. Where Q failed for me was at the end, when he made Monica work too hard to win him back. He should’ve dumped the fiance so obviously not right for him and gone after his woman.

  6. chacha1 says:

    I agree with Erika regarding Quincy. I’ve seen this movie a couple of times and really like it. Q’s arrogance is wrapped in ego/pride/penis which is not my favorite way to account for male behavior … it’s like, that’s an *explanation* but it’s not an EXCUSE.

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