Movie Review: The First Slam Dunk

 

Michael's Movie Grade: A-

A wonderfully made and moving animated sports drama from Japan.

I may not be a basketball fan (nor have I ever actually watched a basketball game), but I found myself quickly engrossed in this movie about the game. That is because everything about this movie is very well done. Even the way the story is told is very clever. The story takes place during one very important and intense basketball game. Over the course of this basketball game, one of the players has flashbacks to everything that lead up to this point. Many of these flashbacks are very emotional and deal with a kid who loses his older brother at a young age and finds basketball as the only thing that helps him make it through the pain. However, this brings only pain to his mom, as it only reminds her of his brother's dreams to be a basketball player. As we see each of these flashbacks, we connect with this character more and more. Because of this what at the start of the film seems only to be basketball game becomes something much more emotionally resonate. As the movie progresses this basketball game becomes something incredibly important to us. Yet despite this movie mostly being this character's story, the rest of the players on the team are very well realized and some of them have their own character arcs. Some of their character arcs can also be surprisingly emotional. This film has does a wonderful job of using animation to make a story that could be told in live action (this is a realistic story that could happen in real life) work even better. As the suspense of the game increases the animation can become a little abstract, and the film can use fast cuts and distort the image in a way that would feel forced and out of place in a live action movie but feel perfectly natural in an animated film. This movie also benefits from a soundtrack that is full of hard rocking songs that add so much energy to the proceedings.

To make this movie all the more impressive this was the first film directed by Takehiko Inoue, who created and wrote the manga series that this film (as an earlier movie and TV show) is based on. Yet he directs this film like a master. 

This is simply a wonderful film and even those who don't normally watch anime or sports may find themselves very invested.