Should you be flipping channels and come across this well-meaning and simple doc, you won’t be entirely wasting your time. The story of Yao Ming is fascinating. (The documentary isn’t; the documentary is hack work.) Yao Ming, if you don’t know, is a 7 foot 6 inch sweet boy from China who is one of the NBA’s greatest players. Watching the move from his spartan room in his parents’ proletarian apartment to VIP suites in Vegas is highly entertaining. Seeing the new development of a “celebrity culture” in China is strangely compelling. B-Ball’s been big in China for a century (there’s footage of Mao cheering a team on) but it wasn’t until recently that they even kept statistics on individual players. (Those damned commies keeping us from tallying the triple double!!!) Anyway, if you can look past the gloss and cheese of the officially sanctioned “NBA Films” production, there’s lots to like in this movie. And Shaquille O’Neal is a dick.
