Linsanity (2013)
Average Rating: 5.2/10
Reviews Counted: 12
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 5
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 4.3/10
Critic Reviews: 8
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 4
No consensus yet.
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Average Rating: 4.2/5
User Ratings: 185
Movie Info
Jeremy Lin came from a humble background to make an unbelievable run in the NBA. State high school champion, all-Ivy League at Harvard, undrafted by the NBA and unwanted there: his story started long before he landed on Broadway. (c) Official Facebook
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All Critics (12) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (7) | Rotten (5)
As a piece of filmmaking, Linsanity is scattershot and too reliant on newsreels. And the interviews, most of all with the religiously devout Lin are, alas, fairly unrevealing.
Top CriticLeong's film isn't particularly stylish, but it makes the most of the climactic Knicks footage, as well as showcasing a sweetly goofy side of the 25-year-old ...
You may have watched Lin's rise to national prominence the first time, but it's still easy to get caught up in the moment.
Lin raised his game's possibilities; you just wish that Mr. Leong had raised his.
A plethora of Lin family home-video clips, riveting archival and Leong-shot footage ... help tell the icon's remarkable story.
Banal and fawning, with Lin coming off as a pious, charmless subject.
While it's a shame Leong couldn't find a fresher approach to Lin's story...he does well in setting the stakes. The greatest basketball phenomenon of the last several years takes care of the rest.
A moving biopic about a humble underdog who surmounted overwhelming odds with the help of family, friends and a strong faith.
The interpolations of "heavenly" sequences of Jeremy Lin playing basketball against CGI backdrops offer a hokey visual analogue for the intersection of faith and sports in his life.
A faith-based film with a pretty good brief-moment-in-basketball history documentary tucked into it.
Audience Reviews for Linsanity
Leong took vacation days to travel and follow Lin over many years from Palo Alto, to Harvard and finally to Houston. The documentary began simply as an immigrant sport story tracking an unknown basketball player; but the filmmaker was blessed because overtime he gained exclusive access to Linn, an Evangelical Christian, who became a worldwide celebrated basketball player for the NBA.
At the beginning, Leong and his crew "...were just making a bunch of six to eight minute long webisodes - something we could put up on YouTube for his fans," said the director. "We thought we'd just cover different moments of his life: His childhood, his play during high school, in college, in the NBA, and so on," Leong explained. "What I really wanted to try and do and show on this documentary was the evolution of how he (Lin) dealt with that, (racism) because it was new to us, but he's been dealing with that his whole life," said Leong.
The producers and directors had "dozen of meetings" before Linn agreed to get in front of the camera although he had made several videos. Lin created the Jubilee Project, which creates videos that tell stories about helping one another and achieving one's potential. Producer Christopher C. Chen has been involved in various projects including one that have made the Oscar-award nomination list for Best Documentary Feature; and producer Brian Yang is an established actor. The film is narrated by Daniel Dae Kim; and the film's title Linsanity, got its name from a cry, which began when Lin was taken off the bench, by coach Mike D'Antoni, propelling the New York Knicks to a seven-game winning streak. "It's Lin-sanity! Knicks score win over Nets" read the headline on Frank Isola's report for the New York Daily News.
During the filming Leong quoted Alfred Hitchcock by saying: "In narrative films, the director is God. In documentaries, God is the director." You don't plan anything, it just happens." What happen in Linsanity is a documentary that revels dedication, faith, passion and self-confidence. It is an inspiring documentary for everyone to see even if you know nothing about sports.
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