Chattanooga Film Festival Review: “Events Transpiring Before, During, And After A High School Basketball Game”
By: Joseph Perry (Twitter - Uphill Both Ways Podcast)
It doesn’t matter when you attended high school; the new Canadian comedy Events Transpiring Before, During, And After A High School Basketball Game is certain to press a few nostalgia buttons. From the sports team philosopher to the drama club rebel and beyond, the film captures characters similar to who we all know and puts them in situations that we or our high school friends likely went through, with consistently entertaining results.
The film’s title sets up its timeline nicely, with the events taking place at the fictional Middleview High School in 1999 Calgary. The boys’ basketball team is taking on a dunk-happy team that hasn’t been beaten in three years, and four drama club members are trying to find common ground on how best to protest against the school’s administrators censoring their “post-colonial” Shakespeare production.
Speaking of drama, there is plenty of it of the seriocomic kind, including a referee whose wife suddenly insists that he take care of their pet Shih Tzu during the game. Meanwhile, the Phil Jackson-obsessed assistant basketball coach (Andrew Phung of Kim’s Convenience,the most well-known member of this game ensemble cast) is dead set on trying to implement the triangle offense sometime this evening, much to the head coach’s dismay, and one member of the team is doing his best to explain his philosophical take on existentialism in The Matrix to his teammates.
Writer/director Ted Stenson has crafted a fun, charmingly amusing day in the life of students and faculty of a 1990s high school, and the janitor gets a moment to shine, too. Stenson aims for the type of humor that brings on a wry smile as it jogs our memory banks, rather than gut-busting big laughs from broad comedy, and he succeeds wonderfully. It’s easy to get invested in the film’s characters, which are brought to life by a terrific ensemble cast. The production values are solid, and Stenson paces the proceedings nicely as the film weaves between each of its subplots.
Events Transpiring Before, During, And After A High School Basketball Game is a fun trip down memory lane that focuses on the whimsical rather than the wacky, though it certainly serves up some kooky, unexpected moments. You’ll cheer for small victories and have a good time with the agony of defeat, as well.
Events Transpiring Before, During, And After A High School Basketball Game screens as part of the virtual Chattanooga Film Festival, which runs online from June 24–29, 2021. For more information, visit https://www.chattfilmfest.org/.
Joseph Perry is one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast (whenitwascool.com/up-hill-both-ways-podcast/) and Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast (decadesofhorror.com/category/classicera/). He also writes for the film websites Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com), Gruesome Magazine (gruesomemagazine.com), The Scariest Things (scariesthings.com), Ghastly Grinning (ghastlygrinning.com), and Horror Fuel (horrorfuel.com), and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope (videoscopemag.com) and Drive-In Asylum (etsy.com/shop/GroovyDoom).
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