Lakers News: Critics, Fans Feel Differently About Fresh LeBron James Biopic

"Shooting Stars" is streaming on Peacock now.

Long before he was earning $44.5 million for your Los Angeles Lakers in 2022-23, All-NBA small forward LeBron James was a prep school superstar with St. Vincent-St. Mary in Akron, Ohio.

The new straight-to-streaming feature film "Shooting Stars," starring Wood Harris, Dermot Mulroney, 2023 lottery hopeful Scoot Henderson, and a cast of relative newcomers as James and his teammates, was released to Peacock last month.

Produced by James' production company SpringHill Entertainment, it has netted fairly different reactions from fans and critics, if the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes is to be believed.

According to Rotten Tomatoes' system, the 32 reviews it has compiled from the pros has the film sitting at a middling 55% approval rating, while its 50+ fan reviews on the site give it a far more robust 66%.

That's not to say that critics loathe the inspirational biopic, rather that they are fairly divided over its relative merits.

"Every moment and image is so perfectly shaped and presented, and rings so true, that you can imagine the same story being told, beat-for-beat, with a cast of invented characters and being every bit as satisfying," writes Matt Zoller-Seitz of RogerEbert.com, in a fairly positive notice.

"This adaptation of LeBron James’s and Buzz Bissinger’s 2009 book would have done better as a six-to-eight-hour limited series," opines David Riedel of The Chicago Reader. "There’s a compelling story here, but this version isn’t it."

Again, fans have been kinder, which is generally the case with these types of flicks. It will be fascinating to see where this ultimately ranks in the pantheon of hoops movies, still an under-filmed sub-genre in my opinion.

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