Review | Giannis: The Marvelous Journey

“Giannis: The Marvelous Journey is a beautiful documentary on the inspiring journey of NBA super star Giannis Antetokounmpo.”

NBA champion Giannis Antetokounmpo is getting his own documentary called Giannis: The Marvelous Journey. It releases tomorrow on Prime Video.

A GOOD SURPRISE

I’m not someone who watches sports documentaries. When I watch a documentary, I usually go with either something related to food, the making of a movie or a series that I love or a documentary about the comics industry. Thus, I didn’t expect to enjoy Giannis: The Marvelous Journey. I also don’t know much about the NBA, though I do know some of the big names and I do enjoy playing basketball. However, I was surprised by how good this documentary is. Before watching this, I only knew that Giannis Antetokounmpo was a great NBA player. Apart from that, I had no knowledge of his journey. And this documentary really enlightened me on who this man is.

This is an intimate portrait of Giannis Antetokounmpo, fully diving into his life and how he made it to where he is now. It doesn’t shy away from his ups and downs. It doesn’t try to go into the overly dramatic or the over sentimentalism. In fact, it just paints his life in the most honest possible way. And I think this really makes a difference. Giannis’ journey is an inspiring one that makes you believe anything is possible. This documentary captures that beautifully.

LIFE IN GREECE

Giannis comes from a family of Nigerian immigrants who lived in Greece. As you can guess, it wasn’t an easy life for him and his brothers when they were kids. The documentary really explains the difficult life he and his family had in Greece as illegal immigrants, struggling to survive, having to work, selling what they could to earn money. On top of that, it also shows the discrimination they faced being immigrants.

This chapter of his life is so important to understand why family is everything to him. Some people want to become famous because of money. But, Giannis wanted to become a pro basketball player to help his family with the money he would earn while still doing something he loved. This is really powerful and shows the true character of his great man.

BECOMING AN NBA CHAMPION

Obviously, the documentary focuses on Giannis’ rise as an NBA player from the moment he was scouted by the NBA to the moment he lead the Milwaukee Bucks to win the NBA championship. It shows Giannis’ hardworking journey to get there. There are many successes. But it also shows his vulnerability. Even though, he may be a basketball legend, he has his own struggles like everyone else. I was surprised to see that he wasn’t afraid to talk about going to therapy. The documentary explores his time in Milwaukee waiting for his family to get visas while lonely on his own. Furthermore, his father’s death was a pivotal moment in his life. Giannis’ speech when he received the NBA Most Valuable Player Award brought me to tears. It is all these experiences that shaped Giannis. So, I think this documentary has done a considerable taking everything into account.

I think what makes Giannis’ journey even more incredible is that he is not only one of the greatest basketball players, he is genuinely a man with a big heart. He is a hero in his own way. It is so touching to see how he cares about his family and how everything he does is for them. It really moved me to tears. Trust me, bring tissues you are going to need them more than once. While other big names would change teams to get a bigger salary and bigger recognition, Giannis is staying with the Milwaukee Bucks. I think this speaks volume about who is Giannis. As someone who truly cares about family, loyalty is important. This, this is who Giannis is. I can totally understand why they made a documentary about his life. And I can tell you it is worth a watch.

VISUALS

Finally, I want to talk about the visuals. It features a lot of interviews filmed for this feature-length documentary. Since family is important for Giannis, it heavily focuses on the interviews of himself and his entire family. They are the best people to talk about his journey and how it felt to get where he is now. There are also interviews of Giannis’ agents, people working with him and some journalists. It’s diverse enough to give you a good picture of who is Giannis.

On top of that, it also features archive footage of Giannis’ career and his family. The editing is well done switching between interviews and footage. The director Kristen Lappas knows how to create emotion from this and make its viewers invested in this journey even for people like me who were not familiar with Giannis’ story. For me, it is really important to have archive footage in a documentary. I want to see what the people are talking about.

However, this documentary has also made the choice to shoot footage recreating some family scenes from their childhood in Greece. And I have to tell you, I hate when documentaries do that. Trying to recreate scenes always feel fake and corny. It doesn’t work. When using the interviews that focused on Giannis’ childhood, Lappas should have just used the interviews and not switch with this type of footage because it takes you out of it. Fortunately, there’s not a lot of it so the documentary is still highly enjoyable.

VERDICT

Giannis: The Marvelous Journey is a beautiful documentary on the inspiring journey of NBA champion Giannis Antetokounmpo. It paints an intimate portrait of his life, showing his ups and downs in an earnest way.