Audience response has little to do with a film's quality, much less my opinion of it -- certainly I've disagreed with the
people sitting around me many times -- but I think the reaction of the crowd with whom I saw "Glory Road" is instructive. The man in front of me, a sharply dressed African-American gentleman, chatted amiably with his girlfriend and others before the film started. He said he doesn't go to movies very often because they're all the same, and I thought: Uh-oh. He's not going to like "Glory Road," then. Surely this film is just like the other based-on-a-true-story sports movies where an underdog team comes out of nowhere to upset its favored opponents. Then the movie began. It's set in 1965-66, when it was unheard of for a college basketball team to be composed primarily of black players. Today, of course, it's honestly funny to hear people say, "A team full of Negroes?! How are they going to win basketball games!," and lines like that earned big laughs from the mostly African-American audience.
To read the rest of this review, click on the relevant link below.