Love & Basketball transcends the simplicity of just alienation, as it reaches for romantic equality and miraculously achieves it.

| Jun 6, 2024

If the romantic complications follow a familiar game plan, the film throws a fascinating spotlight onto the contrast between men’s and women’s basketball.

| Apr 8, 2023

Gina Prince-Bythewood wrote and directed this love story starring Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan is about kindling a relationship amongst their affection for the sport both of them excel at which keeps them bound with daily pressures...

| Feb 28, 2023

This 2000 sports drama, a veritable slam dunk of filmmaking, proves that a genre often written off as banal can appeal to everybody.

| Jul 12, 2022

An exceptional feature writing and directing debut by Gina Prince-Bythewood.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 28, 2022

This is Prince-Bythewood's first feature film as both a writer and director, and she shows admirable command of her craft.

| Mar 9, 2022

Prince-Bythewood's right to avoid the raucous, high-decibel quality of most male-driven sports movies. She's out to give us character studies and she succeeds wonderfully in her writing and her direction of a skillful, emotionally engaging cast.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 9, 2022

he relationship between Monica and Quincy is a treat, making this a great date movie.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 9, 2022

Gina Prince-Bythewood has taken the conventional coming-of-age romance genre and invigorated it with such vivid characters and such alertness to the culture she's representing, that she makes what might have been derivative into something brand new.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 9, 2022

[Prince-Bythewood] draws strong performances from an attractive pair of leads in Epps and Lathan, both of whom have the acting chops and the athletic ability to be convincing in their roles.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 9, 2022

he two stars are immensely appealing (Epps possesses the most liquid, soulful eyes of any actor since Omar Sharif) and create a real chemistry together.

| Mar 9, 2022

[Epps and Lathan] have expressive eyes and faces that sell their basketball and romantic ups and downs about as well as Prince Bythewood's extremely earnest script does.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 9, 2022

While full of great jump shots and on-court action, this "love story in four quarters" is first and foremost a romance.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 15, 2022

A good basketball movie and a great love story.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 15, 2021

This is a feminist, funny, and tender love story...

| Oct 5, 2021

...a slow-moving yet pervasively entertaining drama...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 6, 2021

Too often dismissed as a soppy chick flick, the film is a drama that is clear-eyed and serious about female ambition and gender roles.

| Nov 19, 2020

The impressive cast includes Dennis Haysbert, Debbi Morgan, Regina Hall and Alfre Woodard, and Prince-Bythewood gets deep into the heartaches and triumphs of her main characters as time and events change and shape them

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 21, 2020

[It] wrestles with complicated issues of love and friendship, competitiveness and gender identity...

| Mar 31, 2020

A great movie that showed us a bit of Black love, even with the things that went wrong in the movie. The characters were given an opportunity to grow.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 23, 2019