Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Stephen Curry: Underrated’ on Apple TV+, the A24 Documentary Look at the Basketball Superstar

Stephen Curry isn’t just a basketball superstar; he’s redefined the way the game is played. In Stephen Curry: Underrated, a new feature-length documentary from A24 debuting on Apple TV+, we get a look at Curry’s career arc. From an undersized kid to a college player thought too small for the pros to the NBA’s all-time three-point record holder, we see Curry defy the critics and shift the paradigms.

STEPHEN CURRY: UNDERRATED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Stephen Curry: Underrated follows a familiar template for athlete documentaries. It’s a mix of archival footage from the player’s early days, interviews with family members, coaches and teammates, all structured around a backbone of interviews with Curry himself. It’s straightforward and linear, describing Curry’s arc from a too-small high school player to one of the NBA’s all-time greats.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The streaming era has brought on an onslaught of single-athlete-focus documentary projects, most of them vanity projects made with the full participation and input of their subject, films like Showtime’s Kevin Garnett: Anything Is Possible or Passion Play: Russell Westbrook. Stephen Curry: Underrated fits right into this mold, and we can credit the producers for not attempting to make a many-part documentary like Tom Brady: Man In The Arena or Derek Jeter’s The Captain.

Performance Worth Watching: The film brings in a number of figures from Curry’s life and development as a player, but some of the most interesting anecdotes come from his college coaches at Davidson, a small liberal arts college in North Carolina. Head coach Bob McKillop and assistant coach Matt Matheny still seem excited today as they recount realizing what a boon Curry might be to their small-conference team.

Memorable Dialogue: “When I was nine years old, I played on the 10-and-under AAU team, the Charlotte Stars,” Curry recalls in an early tone-setting anecdote. “I remember looking around like ‘oh, I’m not as tall as him, I’m not as strong as him’–I was the undersized scrawny kid that was just trying to figure out how to make it at whatever level I was playing. That was when I first really understood ‘I’m different’. The temptation for me at the time was to think about what I couldn’t do. But I knew I could shoot.”

Sex and Skin: None, except for that silky-smooth shooting stroke.

Our Take: There is no question that Steph Curry is a remarkable basketball player; perhaps one of the most unique and incredible talents to ever step on an NBA court. He’s anchored one of the league’s greatest dynasties, won championships and set shooting records, all the while sinking shots that look impossible until they drop in.

There’s also no question that his path to the NBA wasn’t assured.

Curry wasn’t coming from nowhere; he grew up around NBA locker rooms, the son of 15-year NBA veteran Dell Curry. But he was small and slight–a skinny 6’-2” player even in high school–and he could’ve ended up like any other child of a famous athlete who gets a taste of the big time off name recognition but can’t stick around. But Steph Curry: Underrated feels a bit too desperate to build this “underrated” brand. In fact, “Underrated” is the name of a brand Curry established in 2019.

The documentary offers a genuinely compelling and well-made look at Curry’s non-guaranteed career arc, but as it builds the case for Curry’s underrated status, it continually undermines itself. At one point, Curry speaks of his dream of playing college basketball for Virginia Tech, a dream that didn’t materialize because his slight frame didn’t impress coaches. It’s a legend-building moment of adversity, on par with Michael Jordan’s famous experience with being cut from his varsity high school team. But Curry’s recollection of why he wanted to play there “both my parents played there, my dad’s jersey is hanging in the rafters” –we’re reminded that he wasn’t coming from nowhere.

Curry ends up on the radar of coaches at Davidson–a small college in North Carolina that was hardly a hotbed for future NBA talent. His coaches recall hearing about his high school performances in media reports, realizing they might have a steal of a recruit on their hands. At one point, assistant coach Matt Matheny recalls a funny story where Curry went radio-silent during recruiting, leading he and head coach Bob McKillop to panic that he’d gotten a better offer. It turns out that he’d just had his phone privileges taken away by his mother, but it illustrates–there were people who believed in Steph Curry and thought he’d be great on a basketball court.

Throughout the film, I was reminded of an oft-resurfaced post from Twitter user @killakow, who noted “there’s always someone on twitter arguing with no one. saying stuff like “but I was told steph curry wasn’t a good shooter”. To a degree, Stephen Curry: Underrated feels like a feature-length version of this phenomenon, a well-done biography with a little too much of a chip on its shoulder. Curry is a remarkable player, and the film is a tightly-crafted, well-produced retelling of his impressive career; but it doth protest a bit too much at times.

Our Call: SKIP IT. If you’re a Steph Curry superfan, you’re going to find a lot to love about Stephen Curry: Underrated; it is a pleasant and well-done retelling of his story. But for the average fan, you’re not going to find much here that you didn’t already know.

Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter, is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.