Touted as the first documentary meant for the IMAX screen, Jordan to the Max is a documentary that follows the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan, in his last season with the Chicago Bulls, prior to his second retirement, as he tries to win a sixth championship. While a nice documentary, it just doesn't make the transfer from the IMAX format very well, though that is not entirely the fault of the filmmakers.
The movie features a mixture of footage from the season, starting at the onset of the playoffs, and continues through the NBA Finals. At each point in the movie there are interspersed interviews with teammates, coaches, announcers and other NBA / sports personalities talking about Michael and his impact on the game. Strangely, some of the key members like Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman are decidedly absent from the proceedings. Rodman might have detracted a bit from the documentary – because he's Dennis Rodman – but hearing more from Scottie Pippen would have been great.
While his on court performances are the focal point of the film, it does take a few minutes out to touch on his time as a minor league baseball player and on his overall celebrity. It is fair to say that at his apex, Michael Jordan may have been the most famous person on the planet, or certainly in the discussion. Additional credibility is lent to the proceedings by the participation of the man himself, Michael Jordan. In a series of interviews, both from previous footage and original material recorded for the film, Jordan gives fresh insight into his mindset headed into the final playoff run; already assured that this would indeed be his swan song. Watching the DVD one question keeps popping up in my mind, “Why?” At 46 minutes long the documentary hardly is long enough to command serious attention. I can watch highlight packages of Jordan on YouTube that are nearly as long as this one. Since most of the footage comes from archival highlights from the 90s or some specific camera work done during those games for documentaries like this one, the picture quality isn’t fantastic, even on the Blu Ray transfer. The tail end of Jordan’s career occurred just before the big boom in HD television programming so while the video is fine, it could be a lot better.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
There are quite a few special features on the disk, though a few of them only serve to intensify the “why?” question of earlier. One of them is a three minute breakdown of how the special effects team created a CGI version of Jordan performing his signature dunk from the free-throw line. The clip serves as the intro to the film and the special feature merely shows it being broken down into the wireframe of Jordan, and then progressively with more effects and features added to it. There isn’t an audio track to explain everything, and it is more or less a waste of time.
Another of the special features is a listing of Jordan’s career stats both in the regular and post-season. Not exactly the most impressive extra that could be put onto a Blu Ray, as a splash screen of numbers is about as exciting as that FBI warning before the movies.
The one special feature that is relevant and interesting is a behind the scenes feature that shows Jordan's involvement with the making of the film, him with the production team watching portions of the film, etc. We know how famously controlling Jordan is of his image and usage in media; so seeing more insight into how he helped to craft the film and what he wanted in or out would have been intriguing. Something else that is missing is a roundtable discussion between Jordan and some of his peers would have also been a fantastic special feature as they relive series past.
"Michael Jordan to the Max" is on sale March 1, 2011 and is not rated. Documentary. Directed by Don Kempf, James D Stern. Written by Jonathan Hock. Starring Michael Jordan.
