Linsanity

[An] enjoyable documentary.

Evan Jackson Leong’s film makes the most of its superior access and exciting basketball footage, overcoming repetitive stretches by sheer dint of a tremendous underdog story.

Leong’s film isn’t particularly stylish, but it makes the most of the climactic Knicks footage, as well as showcasing a sweetly goofy side of the 25-year-old, now playing for the Houston Rockets.

It’s an only-in-America success story worth recounting.

Leong is a San Francisco native, and the documentary has a strong local feel. Lin's high school basketball coach Peter Diepenbrock and his shooting coach Doc Scheppler are interviewed extensively, as are both parents and Lin's brothers.

The interpolations of "heavenly" sequences of Jeremy Lin playing basketball against CGI backdrops offer a hokey visual analogue for the intersection of faith and sports in his life.

This nothing-new-here documentary presents basketball’s onetime celebrity point guard in unguarded moments. But the result is banal and fawning, with Lin coming off as a pious, charmless subject.