Pete Bell (Nick Nolte) is the hard-pressed college basketball coach of Western University running a seemingly clean program. Reporter Ed (Ed O'Neill) has been hounding him about an alleged point shaving incident four years ago. He has his first losing season after winning a few championships. He pushes his team to recruit harder. Butch McRae (Penny Hardaway)'s mother Lavada (Alfre Woodard) wants to be compensated. Farm boy Ricky Roe is more interested in girls. Neon Boudeaux (Shaq) traveled a winding road under the recruiters' radar and scored horribly with his SAT. Pete uses his ex-wife Jenny (Mary McDonnell) as his tutor. His idealism is constantly being worn away by school booster Happy (J.T. Walsh).Nick Nolte holds this together as much as possible. There are many cameos. It's overloaded and some of it is unnecessary. There's no point in having Larry Bird. The movie has so much already. It could trim some of the extras. It has to tighten the first act because it is still waiting to introduce the new players. It's not until midpoint when Shaq finally shows up. Shaq doesn't deserve his Razzie. He's got natural charisma. It's also hard to make this team an underdog with Shaq around. The college ball corruption discussion can be overwrought but I'm fine with that.

I'm not a big sports movie guy, so I went into this not really expecting much other than killing 90 some minutes. I loved it! To see the struggle of a school and coach as they attempt to create a legit winning team in an environment of corruption was interesting. Then when they join that corruption it becomes exciting, you just know it's gonna blowup some time. Nick Nolte carries this film throughout it's entirety, and amazingly the real life players do a great job of acting and the rest of the cast is perfect. I love how they took real players and coaches and brought them into this film, it fits perfectly. The last 35 minutes of this film is brilliant. I've seen many people here talk of how bad this film is, I wonder if they just don't care about sports that much like myself, or have some underlying bias about admitting the corruption exists and always has in much of college sports. I don't care for sports! But I loved this film. The ratings this film gets on here really ticks me off, what is it, a 5.5 star average? I've learned one thing on here and other review sites, if you let others judge for you, you'll miss a lot of good movies.

Blue Chips, for a sports movie, was very well done and well put together. Pete Bell, played by Nolte, is a Bob Knight style coach at Western University, a fictitous university in LA (think UCLA). After a few sub-par seasons, he has his first losing season as head coach and to keep up with the other big programs (think Kentucky and Michigan), he needs to recruit some top players, or blue chips, to come to Western. Strictly against under the table recruiting, Bell is forced to make a tough decision. Recruit good but not great players and perhaps lose his job due to losing as head coach, or go after the top 10 recruits to keep his job and start winning again. The movie plays out well and supporting actors, JT Walsh and Shaq, give solid performances. As for the basketball action itself, this movie probably has the best game sequences I have ever seen in a movie, with real college players filling as extras. There is also a load of cameos, including Rick Pitino, Dick Vitale and Larry Bird to name a few. Blue Chips is a solid movie and a very good sports movie.

Shaquille O'Neal is a great basketball player and it would be nice if his attempts in other fields would lead to equal success but so far, they haven't. This 1994 Paramount release was O'Neal's film debut and features him in a weak story costarring Nick Nolte as a Bobby Knight type character who is dealing with reaching profitable success both on and off the basketball courts. Several cameos help to enhance and improve this film somewhat. At least it's better than O'Neal's later films which would include the unbelievably bad fantasy comedies "Kazaam" and "Steel."