Stephen Curry: Underrated has a story that I honestly believe every young person pursuing their dreams, no matter what they are, should see. However, this documentary is not the complete picture I was hoping for.
Director Peter Nicks (who specializes in stories that intersect with the city of Oakland, California) spends about ninety-five percent of his story focusing on his college years at Davidson in North Carolina. Curry himself is a second-generation NBA superstar, but his journey to the NBA is not one that was really set in stone until almost the end of the window for him to get there. He makes the choice here to spend a lot of time with Curry in his home versus out and about or taking the tour of his childhood area and uses a lot of home video footage shot from his high school and college years to help tell the story. Most of the story itself comes from him, his mother, and his college coaches as he went from five-foot-nothing to a still undersized six-foot-two guy who uses his mind for the game to elevate himself to now having the all-time NBA record for three-pointers (which actually starts the film). There also is a subplot of the fact that he never finished college much to his mother’s chagrin and the process by which Stephen deals with that piece of his life, which I feel is a good part of the message to kids that want to get to his level of career but must understand the odds that they face and how important it is to have a “Plan B” in their lives.
Where this could have been improved for me is the story itself. A good chunk of getting to a successful level is maintaining that drive and determination in order not to lose momentum, and I feel like this part of his story was simply glossed over to keep Underrated inside two hours long. I personally would have liked to have seen more about how he dealt with his supersonic journey to fame and what has kept him grounded. Perhaps some interview footage with more of his family in one place speaking to each other would have enhanced the story just a bit more and sparked some additional stories from each of their points of view.
By the time I had the credits rolling on Stephen Curry: Underrated, I found myself saying something I have said multiple times in the last year or so in that this may have been better served as a multi-episode limited series for Apple TV+ to truly get into Curry’s story deeper in order to truly give his story the impact and respect it deserves. This almost felt more like a documentary about Davidson College than Curry’s story that just happened to take place as he was there and the Venn Diagram therein with his life after the college experience feeling VERY rushed. I still think that his story is one that should be shared with future generations and hope we can get more of it perhaps in a second part that looks at him as a family man and entrepreneur currently and more of his stories growing into the man he would become.
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