# Love & Basketball (2000)

### reviewed by
Homer Yen

    All's Fair in `Love and Basketball'
    by Homer Yen
    (c) 2000

When you read your horoscope, there always seems to be a passage about waiting for stars and planets to align. Supposedly, when this finally occurs, something joyful and magical will happen. For a few glorious moments, everything seems to fall into place. But celestial synchronization doesn't happen too often. The planets continuously move along their own distinct orbits. They are at the mercy of the sun's gravitational forces.

This cosmic representation might be what writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood saw in creating this charming film about a girl, a boy and their delicate relationship. `Love and Basketball' tells the story of Quince (Omar Epps) and Monica (Sanaa Lathan), two childhood friends from two different worlds that want to be together but are inexorably pulled in different directions by the forces of basketball.

We first meet these two as young tykes at the local playground. Despite his youth, Quince already shows the promise of a future star. He doesn't think that girls can ‘ball,' but Monica shows that she can move, dribble and shoot as good as he. Quince doesn't like this at all. He is clearly irritated, yet he is also fascinated with her abilities. An unlikely friendship is born, forged together by basketball.

The film now fast-forwards to their High School senior year. Each of them has immeasurable basketball talent, but Monica's off-the-court situation is much different than Quince's. She struggles to convince her parents that she is not wasting her time with the sport, she struggles with her on-court bad attitude that keeps her benched, and she struggles with finding the heart that makes her a standout player. Basketball is her life, yet her future is always full of uncertainty. Quince, however, benefits from having a father who is an NBA player, is gaining notice among the scouts, and seems so sure that he's destined for greatness that he's almost casual about it.

Through the years, the two remain close friends but we detect a hint of romance. Alas, basketball's forces keep them from connecting. Quince, now a hero for the USC men's basketball team, finds that girls are throwing themselves at him. It is difficult to resist this kind of temptation. Meanwhile, Monica attends the same college and plays for the women's team. She is committed to elevating herself from being a scrub on the roster, which may mean neglecting Quince during a critical time of need. Throughout their college lives and even in the years beyond, they drift closer together and then further apart, only to see this cycle repeat. Their individual journeys are uniquely poignant, and eventually force them to ask some important questions. Was their something missing in their lives? Can love and basketball co-exist? These are the tough questions that they'll continue to explore throughout this amiable film.

`Love and Basketball' has a stately, epic feeling as it follows Quince and Monica over more than ten years of their lives. We see their personal fight to be professional players and their attempts at finding a medium between the forces of love and basketball. The story also poetically incorporates a storytelling device that can be likened to momentum shifts in a real basketball game. Divided into four parts (the movie refers to these as ‘quarters'), each act is set during a different time period of their lives. In one act, we see Quince enjoying fame while Monica weeps in the face of failure. In the next sequence, it is Monica who begins to rise while Quince begins to fall. We're never quite sure if Quince and Monica will ever connect, but it will be joyful and magical if these two stars finally align.

    Grade: B
    S: 1
    L: 1
    V: 0

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