The Air Up There

An American basketball coach talent-scouting among Kenyan tribesmen - you'd expect standard fish-out-of-water culture-clash stuff, in which the natives teach the coach as much as he teaches them, leading to a rousing we-play-as-brothers climax. Sure enough, that's exactly what you get. Give or take the odd spot of predictable arrogance, however, it's a good-humoured, good-hearted film. Bacon is the quintessential smirking and swaggering thirty-something at whom the elders initially poke fun, but to whom they eventually owe a debt of gratitude. Only in Hollywood could a single game of basketball solve a violent territorial dispute.