Writer/director Ward Serrill's wonderful documentary, about a Seattle high school girls basketball team the Roughriders coached by the inspiring Bill Resler, is a "Hoop Dreams" of the early 21st century.
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04/23/09
The Heart of the Game (2006)
86
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:95
Fresh:82
Rotten:13
Average Rating:7.5/10
Consensus: This group of high school girls and their eccentric basketball coach easily win your heart with their unusual humanity and dynamism.
Runtime: 1 hr 43 mins
Genre: Sports/Recreation
US Box Office: $360,467
Synopsis: "Sink your teeth in their necks! Draw blood!" is the rallying cry of the Roosevelt Roughriders girls' basketball team. Imagining themselves as a pack of wolves, the girls tear into opposing... [More]
Director: Ward Serrell
Reviews for The Heart of the Game
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04/23/09
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10/18/08
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08/07/08
Girls have hoop dreams too. And dreams can come true at the final buzzer.
08/01/08
So many astonishing and inspirational events take place that if The Heart Of The Game wasn't such a great documentary, it could have and should have been a box office hit drama.
08/01/08
A nice little documentary that proves that nice guys, and nice girls, don't always finish last.
09/01/07
It doesn't seem appropriate to call it luck, but somehow Mr. Serrill ends up with a story that would make any Hollywood sports movie proud.
07/14/07
Serrill does a good job of grounding the film with the conventions to suck you in and make the team likeable. But then the politics and real stories emerge, which makes the film truly stand apart from the crowd.
04/19/07
[The film] covers seven years and touches on some of the same social issues that gave Hoop Dreams its epic sweep, yet Serrill fails to treat any of them adequately, and the narrative loses its shape as events unfold.
03/26/07
Might best be thought of as a female version Hoop Dreams.
01/09/07
A true sports lover's delight.
12/30/06
The intrusive narration, from hip hopper Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, offers little sense of real lives unfolding, more of a way being paved to an, admittedly tense, all-American triumph-over-adversity climax.
12/30/06
Boredom and irritation set in early with this shallow, parochial and blandly celebratory documentary about a US high-school girls' basketball team, of frankly limited interest to non-US audiences.
12/30/06
Top CriticIt's packed with left-field twists and turns and culminates in a genuinely nail-biting match where old rivalries come to a head. In the end, it's all you can do not to stand up and cheer.
12/30/06
It shifts focus too often to hang together as an in-depth portrait of either the unconventional coach or his headstrong star player.
12/30/06
Top CriticA female version of Hoop Dreams.
12/05/06
...a compelling and insightful glimpse into the convergence of perpetual teenage issues with modern high school athletics, with the entertainment value extending far beyond basketball fans.
08/31/06
The result is nothin' but net.
08/25/06
Who needs faux melodramatic school sports stories when a real-life documentary like Heart of the Game shows it in living, breathing heart-wrenching color?
08/24/06
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