Taking its cue from the life of Ken Carter, a California high school basketball coach who turned a team of underachievers into winners both on the court and in the classroom, "Coach Carter" essentially serves up nothing that we haven't seen countless times before in the "Stand and Deliver"D"Lean on Me"D"Hoosiers"D"Remember the Titans" tradition. [...] even though it adds very little to that well-traveled inspirational genre, it goes to show that you can hit all the usual posts and still manage to stand out from the pack if you've got a guy the caliber of Samuel L. Jackson on your team. Thanks mainly to his considerable presence, "Coach Carter" works more effectively than expected, although, carrying the unnecessary weight of an almost 21D2-hour running time, it doesn't always move with the grace of a trained athlete.

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