When the movie "Be Like Mike" came out, we wanted to see it, just because we like basketball movies. We didn't catch it until seeing it on cable the other night.
We were not prepared for Lil Bow Wow's charisma. He was really great in this movie - unaffected, natural, totally at home in the role. More importantly, he wasn't so caught up in his image that he was too hard to be a kid. He pulled it off with aplomb.
In many ways, the movie is just another piece of Hollywood tripe, with a happy ending, a new family in a very big house with tons of money and no worries. Shirley Temple did a lot of those, too. But still, the basketball was well-managed - not easy in a hoops movie - and the kid was super. All in all, it's a fun hoops movie, and we recommend it.