The story constructed around the basketball play of the legendary Globetrotters is pretty simple, but they sure are fun to watch. Just seeing them standing around in a circle and throw the ball around with their assortment of trick passes, Sweet Georgia Brown playing in the background, was very entertaining (and man, I love that tune). It's a nice snapshot of the 1951 team, led by Marques Haynes and his silky slick handle, as well as big man Goose Tatum, who clowns around and palms the ball without even using all of his fingers. When a white reporter holds his hand up for comparison, it looks like a child's. The Globetrotters had lots of antics up their sleeves, but also a ton of skill - in 1948 and in 1949, they beat the Minneapolis Lakers, a powerhouse, champion team in the leagues that preceded the NBA (the NBL and BAA) - and this is essentially the team that did that.
The love interest (Dorothy Dandridge) is unfortunately not well developed, and if you're watching for Dandridge you'll be disappointed, because her role is so small. The subplots involving gamblers and the star young player considering other options are also pretty weak. The real interest, not surprisingly, is in seeing these players on the court. Even if the game footage is often not all that mind-blowing, it does show just how much the game has changed in 70 years, and we get the playful clowning around.
The Globetrotters play against all-white teams and in front of an all-white audience, so there is undeniably a racial element here, especially when you consider that the first black man to break the color barrier in the NBA did so only a year earlier (Earl Lloyd, 1950, soon followed by others, including several Globetrotters). The film doesn't broach the taboo subjects of the racism they encountered which is unfortunate, but I loved how the players are treated as real people. They have families, don't speak in stereotypical dialect, and their new star player (Billy Brown) was an honors student in college, having made a measured financial decision to play basketball. What a dramatic and welcome change from the depiction of African-Americans in films in the preceding decades.
