#113 - Smoke Show Reviews | Air (2023)

The trailer for Air is very fun.

It’s fast-paced, it’s quippy & jokey, and it maintains mystery over ~who will play Michael Jordan, the eponymous man at the center of the Nike Air Jordan’s origin story.

Spoiler alert: he’s…not shown in the movie.

The movie is instead a slow slog around the Beaverton-bound Nike offices of the 1980s. There are a few other scenes shoved in between but the energy (or, more accurately, the lack-thereof) is distinctly still in the brown-tone offices.

I liked the opening MTV-style montage!

I liked the scene where Matt Damon does an impression of how the meetings with the other shoe companies are going to go!

I liked the giant 80s lighter Matt Damon uses to light Jason Bateman’s lone birthday cupcake candle!

That is the end of the list of things I liked about this movie with a stacked cast and a story that could have been…so good. The trailer clearly got what this movie thought it was doing.

This movie is atrociously paced.

The first 40 minutes are spent telling the audience that:

• Matt Damon is preternaturally good at spotting basketball talent (we are told this in expository monologues by not one but four characters in separate scenes)
• he should not call Michael Jordan’s parents in an attempt to backdoor deal his way to signing Michael Jordan

At minute 41, we arrive at Michael Jordan’s parent’s house to watch Matt Damon break that rule find a loophole (see, he doesn’t call) (do you get it? the movie would really want me to pause and make sure you got it as it seems bound to deliver information in ways that can only be described as hamfisted) and win himself a sit down with Viola Davis who is playing Michael Jordan’s mom (she, by the way, immediately calls out his tactic and he sheepishly agrees that he has circumvented the rules in case you hadn’t gotten it) in the backyard of their home.

They then have a conversation that reiterates what every other character has told us: Michael wants to sign with Adidas and doesn’t want to even come to Oregon to be pitched by this teeny tiny little company that has no foothold in the basketball market or Youth Culture.

The first 40 minutes of this movie was this, punctuated by me going:

“Oh! Matt Damon.”

“Oh! Jason Bateman.”

“Oh! Ben Affleck.” “

Oh! Chris Messina.”

“Oh! Viola Davis.”

At no point did I feel compelled to learn any of the names of the characters they were playing because it was SO apparent that these were A-List Actor’s Acting and I was just supposed to sit back and let them work their craft. (This isn’t even specific to just this movie—in general, I find Famous Actor to be somewhat of a funny concept when it comes to the actual craft/idea of…acting. Disappearing into a role becomes much harder when I’ve seen that face thousands of times before. Let me put it to you this way: can you think of the name of a single character that Paul Rudd has played in a movie?)

I also uh, how do I put this, I did not care.

I did not care for a single second what happened to any of these people.

Because, and this is kind of a fundamental flaw in the structure of this movie, they seemingly cannot decide if they want to let the audience know that they know that we know that this is not an underdog story. No no, this is the origin story of one of the single most lucrative partnerships in corporate history.

At one point Viola Davis monologues about how Michael Jordan is a once-in-a-lifetime player, who will win awards for his gamesmanship that celebrate diametrically opposed skills because he’s just that good, how he deserves a percentage backend cut of these shoes because he’s not Like Other [Basketball Players]. He’s different and special and game-changing.

Which like, is true! We all know it’s true. So it feels like it’s laid on real thick anytime it’s mentioned because traditionally this would be the “take a shot on the kid” speech to convince the agent to go back in there and tell his boss he HAS to make this deal. And it is that, but it’s also a speech that would be overwrought if this was at all a fictional story. This is not convincing because of anything we have been shown we are just once again being told his future accomplishments.

Also like, the shoes were an immediate success and gained even more popularity when Michael gained recognition, but it seems fixated on making sure we know this was a pure basketball skill based decision because that’s the role Matt Damon plays rather than talking about the consumers they were attempting to court via the shoe (and how wildly successful they were at doing that!).

I just don’t know why they’d frame it bootstrappingly. Like ohhh the poor multi-billion dollar conglomerate American Success Shoe Company and is somehow scraping together meager funds to pay an athlete so they can use him to market sneakers that are still so massively popular I cannot leave my house without seeing at least five pairs.

I get that they, the real people who made these choices, didn’t know that at the time. But the movie doesn’t allow me to enter into that space at all. It’s trying to be winky about it—but the scenes are long and slow and there is no fun being had with any of it.

When I saw the trailer I was stumped as to why they chose to “hide” Michael. I legit thought they were doing it as a little hook—but no, it turns out, they really went to every length possible to erase Michael Jordan from his own origin story? But then also didn’t really make it about the guy who designed the shoes? And they made his mom into the real Business Genius and seeming Final Decision Maker but that felt oddly…empty?

I’m not trying to critique this movie based on what it’s not vs. what it is, but I truly don’t get it. Was it because his presence would have overwhelmed the discourse? I mean, there certainly would have been discussions about the performance, who was cast in that role, etc. and maybe Affleck & Co wanted the attention kept on their performances or they were too worried about Getting It Wrong so they didn’t try, but it’s such a narratively weak choice it becomes unignorable.

There is one scene of MJ playing basketball, and it’s grainy real life footage from his Freshman year at UNC. They do a whole psychoanalysis about the way he moves before getting the ball (unlike other athletes he’s calm and calling for the ball despite the pressure of it being the last game) and walk us gently through his college coach’s stats/general distaste for playing younger athletes that was clearly absent for Michael (the play is drawn up for Michael! Another player is just the decoy!). And I get that the movie is, in this moment, attempting to show me something. Only it can’t resist telling me. So we literally watch Matt Damon rewind the footage 10+ times and stare at it in silent awe, then the next scene is him showing Jason Batemen the same clip another 5+ times while now describing to him/the audience what we are supposed to take away. The whole thing could have been 1/10th of the screentime and stayed just as impactful!

I mean, I feel like I got punk’d?

Did people genuinely like this movie???

Did they think the weirdly violent fat jokes lobbed at Matt Damon’s character were charming/necessary/consistent? (At first it’s like innocuous but then Chris Messina literally screams “FAT FUCK” at him in the most vitriolic line of the movie and it! was! jarring!) Was it worth all the casual fatphobia (directed towards a famous not-fat actor) for the gag of him running five strides at the end? He stops short because he’s confirmed running is hard/terrible. The LOLs they thought this gag would bring…just people rolling in the aisles in their imagination at this brilliant setup/payoff!!!!

Did they enjoy the hollow characterization of “sports agent” as played by a yelly Chriss Messina? His character is mean, plot-wise mostly useless, and I genuinely don’t know how they want me to feel about him admitting that he wants to be lonely & rich!!!

Genuinely asking, is this movie a comedy? Because they volley jokes up in the air and let them spin out until they land 30 minutes later with a weird thud.

Like, Ben Affleck directed this movie, and he gave himself the role of Nike co-founder Phil Knight, and he very clearly thinks it’s funny that Phil Knight doesn’t like to wear shoes. Affleck has got his dogs OUT for most of the scenes he’s in.

But his character is…all over the place? Is he a frustrated exec trapped by “the board” now that he’s taken the company public (against Damon’s better judgment apparently)? Is he a creative who wants to take big swings but is now too afraid of big misses? Is he hapless? Because the scene where he nearly fumbles the MJ meeting because he insists on playing a film the “marketing dept put a lot of effort into” is just weirdly cringy and again missing the important tension/frisson of “will they go with Nike?” because we know! the entire fucking movie! that of course they do!

The best part of his performance is a very subtle line reading of, “Thank you, David.” and I was like damn that’s an actor to make me forgive him with a throwaway line because he is a good actor and usually competent director! (I apparently feel the need to remind myself that I did take the most generous notes I could muster in response to this film and came away with…that. Zoinks!)

The plot truly cannot be “who does Michael Jordan choose” because the audience knows the whole time. So I get that they were trying to lean into the “story we don’t know” parts but ALL of those keep coming back to the first question rather than being illustrious depictions of How To Think Outside The Box And Win Big!

Like we geeeeeet it, Matt Damon’s character likes to make bets. He’s a gambler! He stops in Vegas on the way back from scouting trips! He’s impulsive and bets big to win big. But we never see him lose? There is no doubt about him losing when he bets his job over this deal being a success? There’s literally no like dramatic tension about what happens if he doesn’t win? It’s just there as like a biographical detail to emphasize that this was a bet he was willing to make without noticing they’re undercutting the drama by showing he’s literally willing to make any bet at any time.

Is he a gambling addict? Oh, I shouldn’t think too hard about this characterization despite this detail being mentioned repeatedly?

Also, this lady’s makeup took me 100% out of the movie both times she appeared on screen. Put! the full coverage foundation! DOWN!

Her face looks like it was “retouched” by CGI!!!!!! Matt Damon’s face has visible lines literally NO ONE looked like this in the 80s we didn’t have the advanced makeup tech necessary to be rendered PORELESS yet!

You know what this movie did have in spades? Tactile landline phones.

Buttons being pushed.

Phones getting slammed.

Receivers clicking.

There is actually something timelessly satisfying about hanging up a sturdy landline that we simply cannot recreate with cell phones! Even clicking a little foldable cell phone has never come close to the power of hanging up.

Dial tones make for great punctuation!

I love a good phone tbh!!! One of my all time favorite accessories I used to wander down the phone aisles at Circut City/Home Depot/Staples as a child because I loved how each of them was different and the buttons were different shapes and the textures and shapes of the bases and way that the phones cradled—

Anyway, the closing shots of this movie have the classic Based On A True Story format of “look how factual we were” facts placed over still images, but this one also had a distinct “this story is more interesting than we depicted and we totally could have made a better movie” flavor to it.

Like, just make a high-octane documentary, Ben!!!

(Or at least allowed whoever edited the trailer to take a whack at the slow chunks of the film. It’s 2 hours and could easily be 90 minutes. So. much. fluff. Why WHY do they have Matt Damon give a comedic monologue about the meetings and then make us wait for two separate scenes—spaced out by other scenes—for the payoff????)

Nike is a very interesting hyper-American company. There is a truly fascinating story to be told re: marketing, decisions made with billion-dollar consequences, the erosion of ethics around supporting atrocious labor conditions (and the subsequent consumption of those goods by the public) that they blame on subcontractors, waffle irons, authenticity informing engineering, etc. There is also so much to say about Michael Jordan’s revolutionary business practices and self-branding and merch choices. And somehow this movie feels like a meandering story about neither of those things that is also keenly aware that you know the ending to this particular tale and is embarrassed they’re even trying to maintain dramatic tension in the first place.

Just so much of the movie has a “this is funny because you’re living in the future and you know it comes true” vibe and it’s deeply lame.

Could we have spent time, since we did know the ending, talking about the impact? I would have loved to see them receiving the first sales numbers even rather than just a pithy line about how they’re not going to even end up paying that many dividends because “how much are we going to even make? $3 million?” followed with the ~reveal that they actually sold $300 million in the first year in the first info-over-still of the ending montage.

Trudy: What's the artist's name?
Rose: Something Picasso.
Cal Hockley: [scoffs]  Something Picasso? He won't amount to a thing.
[pause]
Cal Hockley: He won't, trust me. At least they were cheap.

Titanic (1997)

Please, I’m begging writers and directors to check the ongoing impulse of eschewing sincerity just because it requires vulnerability.

Please, please stop opting for letting the audience Feel Smart because They Get That Reference.

It’s uh, it’s lazy and bad writing.

Smoke Show Rating: 😶‍🌫️😶‍🌫️/5 (a sports movie with no sports? how dreadful.)

From The Vault

Last year: #54 - Accidentally Rasputining People

Movie review: #12 - He's All That Is More Confounding Than The Original (and the original was baaad)

& another movie review: #15 - I'm Still Mad About The Movie Long Shot

p.s. In reviewing my notes I noticed I said “hinge story” because the other day while looking through my friend’s matches we stumbled on a photo with the caption “my coworkers” but I couldn’t see it because of the sun glare so I sarcastically asked if his coworkers were famous and then leaned in and said “Oh! Matt Damon!” for the first time this week when I was able to see the photo. Felt full circle or something.