Hoop Dreams follows the basketball careersof two Chicago schoolboys with the thoughtfulness of a good character study andthe narrative trajectory of a good game-its ups and downs are excruciating, itsturnarounds unpredictable. For William Gates and Arthur Agee and their peers, thegame is far from a romp on the local park court; childhood's buoyancy is weightedwith the pressures of inner-city poverty, and basketball as a way out. Both boysare scouted for scholarships to a suburban parochial school whose god issuperstar alumnus Isiah Thomas; as the pressure of objectification-to remakethemselves in Thomas's image-begins to take its toll, all bets are off as to thefates of these lads. The filmmakers offer intimate portraits of two verydifferent boys, and of their families whose own dreams are now touchingly out oftouch, now painfully on target. By the end what we wish for Arthur and Williammay actually be the anti-sports: to get a life.