Since 1985, the McDonald’s All-American Game has been the launching pad for high school basketball players bound for greatness. Jordan, LeBron, Shaq and Kobe; they all made a stop on their way to the top. Meal Ticket, a new feature-length documentary now streaming on Prime Video, brings us up close on this legendary showcase.
MEAL TICKET: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: If you’re a basketball fan, you’ve surely heard of the McDonald’s All-American Game, even if you haven’t ever watched it. Just playing in the game is a seal of approval for a young player, and the results bear it out–a majority of players in the game go on to play in the NBA or WNBA. It’s the biggest chance a young player has to boost their draft stock (and their public profile).
Meal Ticket is here to remind you how important the game is–and it’s brought esteemed company to do so. A deep roster of former participants show up on-screen here, including Grant Hill, Chauncey Billups, Jalen Rose, JJ Redick, Blake Griffin, Breanna Stewart, Patrick Ewing, Candace Parker, Dominique Wilkins, Tracy McGrady, Paul Piece, A’ja Wilson and more. This is paired with contemporary(ish) footage compiled during the 2022 and 2023 games, where we see future stars like Flau’jae Johnson on their way to even bigger stages.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? This is less Hoosiers than it is Blue Chips. These players are destined for stardom, and everyone involved knows it. The vibe throughout this movie is a bit celebratory and a bit self-congratulatory… it sort of feels like something you’d be shown when checking in to a weekend at the game itself.
Performance Worth Watching: A number of current and former players show up here, but some of the most endearing moments come from current LSU guard Flau’jae Johnson, who we see literally jumping for joy when she finds out she’s named to the game’s roster. She’s a household name now, but she got here by going through the McDonald’s game.
Sex And Skin: None.
Our Take: “When you’re a kid and you’re dreaming about, like, man, what do I want to do throughout my career?”, Basketball Hall of Famer Grant Hill reminisces. “Playing in the McDonald’s game, it’s one of those accomplishments that you hope you’re fortunate enough to achieve.”
There’s a lot going on in Meal Ticket, which has a number of threads to weave together. It’s a history lesson; the filmmakers want us to know why the McDonald’s game is important, and want to make sure we know about all the great names who’ve passed through in the its nearly five decades of play. It’s also an as-it-happens documentary, with Tom Rinaldi-esque soft-focus features on participants in the 2022 and 2023 games. It’s understandable the desire to try to cram all of this in, but it does make for a bit of a scattered focus–we’re jumping back and forth between young players and Michael Jordan, between prep for the current game and stories of the game’s great moments past.
(It is fun to see a montage of now-familiar faces when they were young, most notably when a pre-Beard version of current Cleveland Cavaliers star James Harden pops up.)
One of the most compelling parts of the film is when we’re offered a window into the world behind the televised product fans are already familiar with–the practices. (Allen Iverson voice: Practice?) That’s right–a host of former participants recall the intensity of the practices that precede the game. It’s already part of basketball lore that the greatest basketball game ever played may have been a fiercely-contested intra-squad scrimmage held by the 1992 Olympic men’s team (the “Dream Team”) before they took the stage in Barcelona… well, the same sort of all-star rivalry apparently takes place before the McDonald’s game.
“Looking back now,” New York Liberty superstar Breanna Stewart recalls, “the All-American practice was very intense, compared to a WNBA All-Star practice. People were going at it. Everybody knew why you were here.” This is echoed by two-time NBA Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard, who recalls “the McDonald’s All-American practices, by the time we left I’m sure there’s a few screws and hinges left off the rim, that was a different kind of beast, man.”
Our Call: SKIP IT. Meal Ticket is a smart, capably-made documentary that gives proper respect to its subject matter, but ultimately it doesn’t rise to the level of must-see TV for the average basketball fan.
Scott Hines is a Louisville, Kentucky-based writer and publisher of the much-loved Action Cookbook Newsletter.