When your source material is the true story of a New Orleans high school basketball team on an improbable
post-Katrina winning streak, producing an inspirational film should be an easy layup. Yet Hurricane Season hoists up a brick. Here, the ravaged city is merely a support player, its plight trotted out to add dramatic weight to what is, essentially, a conventional underdog sports movie. It doesn't help that the script is an endless string of motivational speeches, or that the actors---led by Forest
Whitaker, who quivers and quakes in an exhausting display of overacting as the team's coach---play every scene with the same rim-rattling intensity. All the emotional fireworks fail to shed any meaningful light on New Orleans after the storm.
