For Indy Film Fest showtimes, click here. Long before Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson suited up for the so-called Dream Team to romp through the 1992 Olympics like a runaway rhino, there was another amazing basketball team.
Instead of being made up of the titans of the sport playing for the country that invented it, the 1935 Latvian team was a bunch of nobodies from a nation that had very little reputation in international competition. The fact that they won the EuroBasket 1935 title makes the film about their odyssey more of a European “Hoosiers” than anything else.
“Dream Team 1935” was shot in Latvia and Geneva, where events actually took place. It’s a sumptuous production with terrific sets, costumes and cinematography. The screenplay and acting are a little on the obvious side, but it’s effective as a story about little guys overcoming adversity.
Considering this is a Latvian production, it’s a bold move to depict the corruption and bureaucratic skullduggery that almost sunk the team before it even laced up its sneakers. The sports committee is made up of knaves who want to use their funding for their own lavish travels rather than giving it to a basketball team they think will embarrass them.
Baumanis (Janis Amanis) is a young player/coach who recruits a bunch of scrubs to take on the University Sport team, widely considered the favorites. Baumanis’s team loses, but only after some outright cheating. Through a series of press interference and misunderstanding, he gets picked to lead the national team in Geneva.
The first half of the film is largely concerned with Baumanis recruiting the University Sport members to join his team while fending off various attempts at intimidation and sabotage by the sports commission. The second half is pretty much all team-building and basketball action.
The drama works better than the hoops. Though director Aigars Grauba has a skilled hand, it’s hard to capture an exciting game given the rules of basketball at the time. For example, they do a jump ball from center after every basket. And the athletic abilities of a bunch of white European athletes from 1935 don’t come close to matching the grace and speed of the modern game — no dunking or fancy ball handling.
I mean heck, it’s hard to convey an exciting game when the actual score of the championship bout was 24-18.
Still, Amanis is effective as the resolute Baumanis, and “Dream Team 1935” is a reasonably entertaining and inspiring tale.
3.5 Yaps