For impoverished black teens, sports are still a viable way out---at least according to Anne Buford's intermittently compelling doc. This time, however, the subjects hail not from our nation's inner cities, but from Dakar, Senegal. Through the Sports for Education and Ecominic Development in Senegal (SEEDS) program, a trio of basketball standouts are given a chance to bring their hoops skills to American prep schools, enticed by the looming possibility of Division 1 colleges and a possible NBA future. Elevate works as a sympathetic portrait of cultural adjustment (learning in a nonnative language, sticking to Muslim dietary restrictions), but never adequately addresses the problems of what's essentially a neocolonialist system designed to shape impoverished Africans into first-world profit-makers.
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