Pistol: The Birth of a Legend (1991)

So much average

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This is about as clean a story as you could find: a nice story about the famous basketball player "Pistol" Pete Maravich in his earlier days. An incredible talent, Maravich went on to star at LSU and then in the professional NBA.This particular story centers around young Maravich as an eighth-grader playing basketball for his high school team. The first half of the film was fascinating as actor Adam Guier was very credible exhibiting Maravich's tremendous ball-handling skills for a kid his age. There also is some nice photography in here.The second half of the movie became a little too Hollywood-cliché ridden. I wish they had gone into Pete's college and pro career and ended with his conversion to Christianity before his untimely death. It could have been a very powerful movie instead of just a nice after-school-type TV film. (Just reading another review here, I am glad to learn some of that material is included in the DVD. My only look at this was on tape about a dozen years ago.)

I enjoyed this video. The movie-making quality is not the highest, and the acting is undoubtedly less than stellar. However, I found that this movie had a lot of heart. It is a much better family movie than many others out there, with no profanity and little violence. I'd recommend this movie to anyone who has an interest in Pete Maravich and his life.This movie was made to describe the basketball history of Pete Maravich, and shows a special relationship between Pete and his father, which I thought was refreshing. It's a joy to see a parent who did his best to establish common ground with his child so that they could relate to each other. So if you're interested in basketball, go ahead and check this movie out. You may find yourself charmed by the innocence in the story of the young Pete Maravich.

I'm beginning to think that every other person (save one) who posted on this movie's board has sustained some sort of serious head trauma. I looked this film up with hopes that I could enter into some fantastic and deeply ironic conversation on this film's utter lack of merits. Imagine my surprise when I found that some people seem to enjoy this terrifyingly bad piece of rubbish.The acting is atrocious, particularly from the slow child in the title role. He seems ruefully aware of the fact that there is a camera in his face. The script seems less to have been "written" then compiled from a book of clichés by an illiterate night manager at Wal-Greens. The screenwriters hope to trick the audience to accepting comments like "you don't want people to think you're light in your loafers, do you?" as homespun wisdom or, at the very least, something that normal loving families say.Maybe I'm just a purist, you know, with wanting healthy relationships to be sustained by something more than a game. But apparently, according to a few posters, a shared love for basketball is a healthy and loving way for a father to relate to his son. One wonders what sort of relationship Press would have had with his boy had he been, say, a dancer. I'll leave that to your imagination.In any case, this movie blows. Hard. Don't ever ever ever ever ever watch it.

This film won't impress you with special effects or big-name stars, but it's the type of film that you enjoy so much that you're saddened when it's over. Any basketball fan must view this inspirational homage to Pete Maravich, although non-fans will still appreciate the heart of this little film.