Duane Martin is "Above the Rim",
As basketball is important to him.
And he'll endure,
Rival Tupac Shakur,
Playing outside or in the gym.

Maybe the finest original hiphop soundtracks of all time. The origin of a couple classic songs most notably 2pacs "Pain". The whole album is great though I own it. I kind of wish they still let artists throw original songs on movies these days, but I guess soundtracks don't really sell anymore.

2pac was an immense talent behind the mic and in front of the camera. This movie may be super 90's with a paper thin plot but I loved every second of it. The street ball segments in the third act are particularly great.

Iconic soundtrack. Pretty good movie too.

This one is about a promising high school basketball star, Duane Martin and his relationships with two brothers, one a drug dealer (Tupac Shakur) and the other a former basketball star (Leon) fallen on hard times and now employed as a security guard at the high school.

This one has a decent story and some pretty good performances from Shakur and Leon. This was actually the first project that I have ever seen or heard from Shakur. I guess that shows you how out of touch I am with modern culture as it took 18 years after his death to discover Tupac Shakur. Now who is this Kurt Cobain guy?

The basketball scenes are pretty well done as well. There is not much new in this movie....but I still thought this movie was interesting. This ranked 15th of 44 basketball movies on my Basketball Cogerson Movie Score table. cogersonmoviescore.com/basketball-hockey-movies-best-to-worst.html

He slam dunks his best friend to death.

"All you gotta do is score, Kyle."

I remember when playing Streetball, I tried to do a lot of fancy moves on an older guy in his 40s (I was 19 at the time) to only lead to my embarrassment. He locked me up, stole the ball, and scored.
That day, he taught me the true meaning of defense.

I can't decide if Tupac is interesting to watch because you are easily influenced by his fate/legacy, or because he is actually a compelling actor. You forget how young he was. 22 in this. 21 in Poetic Justice. 20 in Juice. 25 at his death. He had plenty of growing to do as an actor but who's to say if he would have blossomed into a full-blown adult actor like some of his rapper peers. It's safe to say the man had a monster career cut short. My hot take is that if Biggie and Tupac were both still alive, Biggie would be washed up and Tupac would be a Jay-Z style near-billionaire. No disrespect to Biggie but that's how I see it. As for Above the Rim, it's fairly generic whenever Tupac isn't on screen. It makes you miss the 90s, particularly sports movies from the 90s, but outside of revisiting the era, the film is inoffensively forgettable.

I've only ever seen the tournament part of this movie because my friend who had it would jump skip right to it so we could get amped up before we played like it was an And 1 video. I give this the highest honor of 90s basketball movies by considering it's on a level of White Men Can't Jump. I love how my man Shep plays in courdoroys and moves like a goddamn vampire.

One of my favorites from high school. Still
holds up.

Adds nothing really new to a jumbled mass of sports/redemption narrative cliches, yet still worth a revisit for the stone cold banger soundtrack and remembering what we lost when Tupac died. Guy had a swagger you can’t teach in any acting class. Anyway, I miss when pre-LOTR New Line was devoted to slightly more polished exploitation and horror. From nutty sci-fi like THE HIDDEN to Carpenter’s IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, Bob Shaye delivered that pure genre headrush. Success ruins everything.

Iconic premise: a violent basketball melodrama with Tupac and Wood Harris as a pair of supervillains. Iconic ending. Iconic soundtrack. ❤️

Hot headed, high school basketball phenom, Kyle (Duane Martin), is on verge of playing college ball at Georgetown and then onto the NBA. He gets caught up with drug dealer, Birdie (Tupac Shakur), after he is introduced to him by his best-friend, Bugaloo (Marlan Wayans). Former standout player, Shep (Leon), is now a security guard at the high school. There paths converge when Shep shows Kyle a thing or two about his game and that education is the way out. Tension rises between Kyle and Shep when Shep get romantically involved with Kyle’s loving and hard working mother (Tonya Pinkins), and tells him not to get mixed up with Birdie, who just so happens to be Shep’s little brother. There are cliches of the 90s in this film but the cast does a great job with what they are giving. Director and co-writer, Jeff Pollack, illustrates the roughness of street basketball and intertwines it with the real harshness of life.

Iconic soundtrack. Pretty good movie too.

February 2021 - Black History Month: 12/18

This movie takes itself a little too seriously and doesn’t quite earn its emotional payoff due to the way it lurches from cliche to cliche. That said, it is a wildly entertaining watch, with one of the most ridiculous opening scenes in movie history. Tupac is less central to this than I expected, but the soundtrack is fantastic. (Also, Rollins an all-time bad coach, even by sports movie standards)

if you cant dunk dont watch the movie cuz then youre trash

I give this movie three stars solely because of the genre. I love basketball and the mix of that with street/inner city culture. With that being said the plot line could have been way more thought through. I wanted to know more about sheps past and what happened to him.

Hood classics can be unintentionally funny.

Been a loooong time since I saw this. It’s such a 90’s movie to the point where you gotta find humor in some of the scenes. It’s also great to see Tupac in action. That final scene with him though 😵

This movie looks really good for being from ‘94 (though that could just be HBO Max enhancing the picture or something, idk.)

Thought Bernie Mac kind of stole the show relative to his screen-time.

Would’ve been cool to see what Tupac’s acting career would’ve looked like if he was still with us. He definitely brings some charisma and natural talent to his role.

[ 7.31/10 ]

I don’t know if I found it particularly memorable, but I definitely enjoyed it, especially the music. I’m glad I finally watched it.

I've only ever seen the tournament part of this movie because my friend who had it would jump skip right to it so we could get amped up before we played like it was an And 1 video. I give this the highest honor of 90s basketball movies by considering it's on a level of White Men Can't Jump. I love how my man Shep plays in courdoroys and moves like a goddamn vampire.

Tupac was a better actor than rapper. And that’s not to knock his rapping abilities I’m just saying this movie and juice are top teir.

good performances from bernie mac and marlon wayans, idk what it is but in every movie with tupac he's not the character that he's supposed to portray he's just tupac, I thought Shep's character was poorly written and the fact they had this nigga playing basketball with no ball in the middle of the night in brooklyn in the winter was fucking crazy lmfao but yeah they had a dope soundtrack and it was a real nostalgic film. RIP Bernie Mac and RIP legendary Coach John Thompson.

It’s as much of a hood film as it is a basketball film. It try’s to do something interesting and different with the characters in the film but falls flat at times. Tupac steals the show, you feel his presence in every scene but not by his star power as a rapper but as an actor.