Rise Parent Guide

Charles Antetokounmpo (Dayo Okeniyi) and his wife, Vera (Yetide Badaki) have left Nigeria in search of a better life for their family, but life in Europe isn’t easy. Now they’re in Greece with no passports, no immigration papers, and no clear path to legal residency. While Charles and Vera struggle to find work and stay under the government’s radar, their eldest sons, Giannis (Usha Agada) and Thanasis (Ral Agada) have made a discovery: basketball. What starts as a friendly pickup game in the park turns into an invitation to come play for a free local team, and the boys find a passion for the sport – a sport that puts a premium on their natural height and reach. The prospect of pro sports income is tantalizing, but it’s not going to be easy to find a way to go pro without catching the watchful eye of the government’s immigration police…

This feel-good filmis essentially free of negative content but it’s also barely worth watching. It has all the excitement of reading a Wikipedia article while you wait for a bus. The characters are all nice, well-intentioned people, and mostly completely interchangeable. Their meek good natures, while laudable, make them very static characters. No one has any serious internal struggles, there’s no tension between members of the family, and there are no chances for characters to grow or change. All of the Antetokounmpos’ problems are external and almost entirely beyond their control. Their issues with a biased and deliberately inaccessible immigration system and the dangers of rising anti-immigrant sentiment are realistic and tragic, but the script never digs into those issues deeply enough to make those parts of the story compelling.

I suspect the filmmakers were trying to make this a lighthearted story suitable for families with young children, but they did so by stripping out anything that might give the story some drive. As such, it coasts along, waiting for the plot to develop with an easy patience that hurts the pacing and story. I don’t think even younger children are going to have much fun with a biopic this slow. You’d think the basketball could liven it up, but there’s no narrative to any of the games. All you get are disjointed highlight reels for the protagonists. Even on the court, the film lacks enough conflict to make a dynamic, exciting story that can grab an audience. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a sleep aid, this is exactly what you need.