It's odd when you think about it, but USC's film school is world renowned and then you see this lackluster documentary which talks heavily about how great their film school is. Life has a way of repeating itself, for the perceived greatness of something doesn't always deliver, and that in turn is this documentary.
As a student of a west coast university that watched his alma mater get pummeled against this epic team, I was expecting a lot. Everyone knew how great this team was. I mean, our local news called it a tough showing for losing by only 21 points despite giving up over 700 yards of offense. That was how the bar was set for this team. What I'm also trying to say is I already knew a lot about this team, for even though I attended Arizona the news and stories about this team overshadowed our own (plus we were lousy so the local news had to report something). So the fact this documentary really revealed nothing new other than take the same steps other documentaries had taken, it was a let down. Basically this documentary cut and paste the same structure of other ESPN team documentaries like Pony Excess and The U, only there was nothing really interesting and compelling about it. And it stems for one reason.
Reggie Bush brought down the university. The NCAA went too hard at the school and the punishment was an injustice. Other schools did worse and suffered less. Those should have been the focus, not a basic structure the documentary had. The central issue is that Bush didn't participate in the story. If that was the case from the beginning, why even make the documentary? What made Pony Excess and The U documentaries so good was the candid participation from ALL levels of the scandals. Quotes like "Oh yeah, we're gonna show you how to cheat!" in Pony Excess and "There was no racism involved, we were just bad boys!" from The U were iconic lines from those documentaries. All we got was Matt Leinart softly going through the motions, Pete Carroll never being pushed about leaving the mess behind, pointless interviews from USC alumni, hangers on and academics and of course....no Reggie Bush. And I haven't even gotten to the structure of the documentary.
It tried too damn hard. It wanted to be clever. The film maker really thought he was being cool and such, but it bordered on the same problems that other perspective documentaries from ESPN like Big Shot and Straight Out of LA had....it's not about the subject but about the film maker. If I wanna see something like that I got far superior subject matter from Werner Herzog, Michael Moore and Errol Morris.
Either way, ESPN has made far worse and some day I will critique them, but this was just a sad disappointment.
As a student of a west coast university that watched his alma mater get pummeled against this epic team, I was expecting a lot. Everyone knew how great this team was. I mean, our local news called it a tough showing for losing by only 21 points despite giving up over 700 yards of offense. That was how the bar was set for this team. What I'm also trying to say is I already knew a lot about this team, for even though I attended Arizona the news and stories about this team overshadowed our own (plus we were lousy so the local news had to report something). So the fact this documentary really revealed nothing new other than take the same steps other documentaries had taken, it was a let down. Basically this documentary cut and paste the same structure of other ESPN team documentaries like Pony Excess and The U, only there was nothing really interesting and compelling about it. And it stems for one reason.
Reggie Bush brought down the university. The NCAA went too hard at the school and the punishment was an injustice. Other schools did worse and suffered less. Those should have been the focus, not a basic structure the documentary had. The central issue is that Bush didn't participate in the story. If that was the case from the beginning, why even make the documentary? What made Pony Excess and The U documentaries so good was the candid participation from ALL levels of the scandals. Quotes like "Oh yeah, we're gonna show you how to cheat!" in Pony Excess and "There was no racism involved, we were just bad boys!" from The U were iconic lines from those documentaries. All we got was Matt Leinart softly going through the motions, Pete Carroll never being pushed about leaving the mess behind, pointless interviews from USC alumni, hangers on and academics and of course....no Reggie Bush. And I haven't even gotten to the structure of the documentary.
It tried too damn hard. It wanted to be clever. The film maker really thought he was being cool and such, but it bordered on the same problems that other perspective documentaries from ESPN like Big Shot and Straight Out of LA had....it's not about the subject but about the film maker. If I wanna see something like that I got far superior subject matter from Werner Herzog, Michael Moore and Errol Morris.
Either way, ESPN has made far worse and some day I will critique them, but this was just a sad disappointment.