‘Linsanity’ prepares to take over the Bloor Cinema

The underdog sports story is one of the oldest tales in film. This is the one where the athlete that nobody believed in eventually proves everyone wrong to roaring applause. Such is the true life story of professional basketball player and overnight sensation, Jeremy Lin. Lin grew up living a normal life, idolizing his favourite basketball players on TV, and mimicking their moves on the courts with his brothers. He would time and time again prove he was an exceptional player but was often passed over because he didn’t look like a traditional basketball star.

 Evan Leong’s Linsanity focuses on the meteoric rise of Jeremy Lin and chronicles his early childhood memories while paralleling it with Lin’s current NBA stardom. The documentary does a great job of capturing the real Jeremy Lin, and getting a first-hand account from the star himself, which reveals the very personal and spiritual journey that the basketball sensation has been on since his youth. The strongest aspect of the film is that it doesn’t just gear itself towards basketball fans; it instead opts for a broader approach making it accessible and fun to watch for everyone. Even someone who has never sat and watched an entire basketball game will stay engaged in the film throughout. .

 Linsanity really captures the essence of the person it’s focusing on and never manages to feel stale or boring, and I feel this can be attributed to the amount of screen time that Jeremy Lin actually has in the documentary. With Jeremy Lin himself an active participant in the film’s process, some of the more fascinating interviews are with people that had an impact on him before his NBA career breakthrough, specifically family members and coaches from his youth. It makes for a much more personal documentary rather than just an overall look at his career. Linsanity has something in it that will appeal to everyone from basketball fans to documentary aficionados alike. (David Edwards)