This drama-free, non-gripping documentary on the basketball star’s career sees him chuckling at banal anecdotes and breezing so easily through life that there’s only one winner – and it’s not the viewer
In the fourth and final episode of They Call Me Magic (Apple TV+), Earvin “Magic” Johnson – often considered the finest basketball player of all time – sits comfortably, smiles widely and assesses his own merits. “All the things I was on the basketball court, I am as a businessman. Disciplined. Focused. Building a strategy.” While these may well be the qualities needed to become a multimillionaire sporting hero, they are not the traits that make for a gripping sports documentary.
They Call Me Magic is a story of obstacles overcome, but Johnson hurdles them all so easily that no drama develops. He grows up in an honest, blue-collar family in Lansing, Michigan, his mother working in a school cafeteria while his father does long shifts at a car plant. Honing his basketball skills in pickup games against grown men, Earvin Johnson Jr soon has scalpers trading tickets outside his high school matches, is given the nickname “Magic” and proceeds smoothly to college level, where he leads Michigan to the 1979 NCAA championship. The cloud of his unglamorous upbringing clears.
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