Critic Reviews

• J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader

  A real air ball, so poorly scripted that most of the major plot developments occur offscreen.

• Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper

  I hated this movie. It's a piece of junk.

• Claudia Puig, USA Today

  Much as they would like it to, basketball can't save the youthful inner-city players here. Nor does the ultra-fast-paced street version of the sport save this movie from predictability and tedium.

• Desson Thomson, Washington Post

  Just a few more tweaks and Crossover could have been something special -- a truly terrible movie to savor for the ages. But nooo, this street ball movie has to settle for middle-of-the-road badness.

• Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times

  You can't blame Crossover for being comfortable with its own clichés. It's so blatantly formulaic that it actually grows on you if you don't dismiss it in the first five minutes.

• Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle

  Crossover has one redeeming quality: a heart that's in the right place. It's a bad movie with a good message -- but does anyone really want to pay $10 for an ABC After School Special version of He Got Game?

• Tom Meek, Boston Phoenix

  Even though the plot forgoes the formulaic slam-dunk, hackneyed devices, low production values, and the stilted direction (by Preston A. Whitmore II) dribble the ball off the shoe and out of bounds.

• Jim Lane, Sacramento News & Review

  The movie is also burdened by some amateurish acting in supporting roles, but Mackie and Jonathan are the real deal, and they get good support from Wayne Brady as a smarmy sports agent.

• Cynthia Fuchs, Common Sense Media

  Basketball players come of age in lame drama.

• Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone, TheMovieChicks.com

  If BET made after school specials, this is what they would look like.

• Bartley Morrisroe, Premiere Magazine

  The streetball scenes, much like the plot, have a few high points but never hit their stride.

• Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle

  Writer-director Preston Whitmore II's basketball film is a well-intentioned but utterly clichéd slice of Detroit life.

• Tim Cogshell, Boxoffice Magazine

  The inspirational sports movie cliches notwithstanding, Crossover is just bad filmmaking that does not serve either its cast or its audience well.

• Linda Cook, Quad City Times (Davenport, IA)

  Here's a story that wanders all over the place with an ending that just about anybody could predict.

• Cynthia Fuchs, PopMatters

  The beginning of Crossover looks like a mash-up of McG's Fastlane and Wayne Brady's storied appearance on Chappelle's Show.

• Todd Jorgenson, Denton Record Chronicle (TX)

  The movie looks as though it was edited in a Cuisinart, more concerned with frenetic cutting than coherent storytelling.

• Michael Szymanski, Hollywood.com

  Despite a superb cast, Crossover dribbles slowly, with not nearly enough time on the basketball court.

• Luke Y. Thompson, E! Online

  The budget appears to have been blown entirely on a single yellow motorcycle and team uniforms for the underground streetball games that are the film's raison d'être.

• Scott Tobias, AV Club

  An end-of-summer throwaway that resembles last year's Supercross in its naked ineptitude and willingness to cut corners at every turn.

• Fred Topel, Can Magazine

  The Annapolis of basketball movies... The movie bounces from scene to scene like some sort of round rubbery sphere.

Read all 20 critic reviews