In 2014, former NBA All-Star Kenny Anderson traveled to North Korea with enfant terrible Dennis Rodman to play an exhibition basketball game. The event, which was billed as “basketball diplomacy,” was really just a birthday gift from Rodman to Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of the DPRK. It was a head-turning, scandalous move for Anderson (no one was particularly surprised by Rodman, who has long had a friendly relationship with Kim). Yet, in the new documentary, “Mr. Chibbs,” which seeks to paint a portrait of Anderson’s life, both before and after basketball, the trip and game take up a few short minutes, only to be quickly swept aside. In a way, it’s representative of the film as a whole: “Mr. Chibbs” isn’t about Anderson’s fame or his money (or lack thereof), it’s about him, his family, their tangled relationships, and what kind of person he still wants to be.
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For basketball fans, the career of Kenny Anderson, is one of legend. While still in high school, Anderson began to garner copious amounts of national attention, recognized time and again as the best point guard to ever play high school basketball. The success translated well to college and Anderson made up a third of the Lethal Weapon 3 — the nickname for Georgia Tech’s indomitable scoring force in 1990. But the transition to the NBA didn’t go as smoothly as planned. Drafted as the number two pick in ‘91, Anderson was a strong player, even becoming an NBA All-Star in ‘94, but he never reached the heights the basketball world anticipated. Which, in sports, more or less constitutes a failure. The blame, Anderson is certain, was his lifestyle, and more specifically, his drinking.
“Mr. Chibbs” picks up long after Anderson has hung up his jersey. Retired for over a decade, Anderson lives a quiet life in Florida with his third wife and two of his eight children. Beneath the surface of his comfortable existence, though, is a current of discontent; Anderson doesn’t know what to do with himself. For a while, he was the coach of a high school team, but he lost the job after a DUI. Now, still in his 40s, Anderson is on a quest of sorts to find out what to do with the rest of his life. The only obstacle is his self-destructive tendencies.
The overt difficulty of “Mr. Chibbs” is that this quest of self discovery is never terribly external. Anderson isn’t actively applying for coaching positions or working with one of his many mentors on how to get his lifestyle back on track. Instead, the film follows him as he takes various, inconclusive trips around the country to appear at basketball camps, meet with his former agent, visit his other children, and, eventually, handle the backlash of his trip to North Korea (which, again, is a minor blip in the film). Throughout, Anderson himself is a buoyant, larger-than-life personality, at times vulnerable, courageous, defiant, and inquisitive, which makes him an endearing, engaging presence and saves the film from its lack of momentum and narrative development.
From the start Anderson is eager to turn his life around. He’s eager to be a better father and a better husband. He’s eager to coach. But, time and again, he stumbles or underperforms at each, although never egregiously so. He is not abusive or unhinged. Rather, his worst tendencies just keep getting the best of him. And while the cyclical nature of these scenes — the way Anderson grows and reverts, grows and reverts — can leave the film feeling stagnant, it does eventually pave way for some painfully honest moments of introspection, as Anderson battles to figure out just why he is the way he is. As underwhelming as some of the film’s middle may be, the emotional dividends are mostly worthwhile.
This in part is because the goals of “Mr. Chibbs,” as directed by Jill Campbell, are not terribly lofty. It wants to be an honest depiction of what life is like after achieving the fame and money that so many spend their whole lives chasing. And for his part, Anderson is game to let the cameras in; he is by turns vulnerable and confident, self interested and giving. But more than anything else, he is hungry to find out who he is after basketball, as a husband, a father, and a man. And while “Mr. Chibbs” never manages to transcend its formulaic approach, it remains a minor key delight, a thoughtful, resonant look at what it means to be Kenny Anderson. [B-]