In the ’80s and ’90s, no one made sports movies as lively, authentic and full of likably colorful characters as Ron Shelton, be it the rambunctiously romantic Bull Durham, the caustic Cobb, the charming Tin Cup, or the punchy Play It to the Bone. In that list one must also include White Men Can’t Jump, a buddy-comedy pairing of Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes that amusingly navigated the ins and outs of L.A. street basketball culture and, with it, the fever-pitch racial dynamics of early 1992.
A film about hustling, manhood, teamwork, and the way in which two perfectly matched athletes can make sweet music on the court, it was a critical and commercial success built on the chemistry of its leads and the prickly, sexy, and charged prose of its writer/director.
White Men Can’t Jump was a natural outgrowth of its particular era and its post-Rodney King, pre-L.A. riots tensions. Nonetheless, given that we’re in a current age of endless streaming reboots and expansions of notable hits, it’s now been reimagined by black-ish’s Kenya Barris and director Calmatic (fresh off his House Party do-over) with the same title, two infinitely less magnetic actors, a schmaltzier and more unbalanced story, and a few contemporary references that are meant to pass as updates. The world didn’t need a new White Men Can’t Jump, much less one without the direct involvement of creator Shelton, and the end result is a movie (debuting on Hulu on May 19) that even fewer will want to endure.
There isn’t a single change in Calmatic’s White Men Can’t Jump that isn’t for the worse, beginning with the fact that its Black-white protagonists—Kamal (Sinqua Walls) and Jeremy (Jack Harlow)—aren’t professional hustlers, but former basketball phenoms whose paths to the NBA were derailed by respective calamities. For Kamal, that was a high-school incident in which he punched out a taunting fan, and for Jeremy, it was a series of knee injuries that sabotaged his college career at Gonzaga.
As in Shelton’s original, they meet at a pick-up game, with Kamal assuming that Jeremy—who wears colorful parachute pants, headbands and socks with sandals—is a clown, and getting hustled for his race-colored assumption. From the get-go, however, Jeremy and Kamal are cast not as canny and cocky operators but as desperate strivers still nursing old wounds, which for the latter also concerns the ailing condition of his doting father Benji (the late Lance Reddick, once again wasted in a peripheral part).
Jeremy and Kamal’s ensuing relationship involves a bunch of jokes about race, yet there’s no spikiness to this banter, since they seem like good guys who—despite the color of their skin—hail from similarly disadvantaged backgrounds (replete with MIA parents) and have experience with California’s path-to-the-pros basketball programs and culture.
When Benji says, “I bet y’all got more in common than meets the eye,” it’s not just evidence of White Men Can’t Jump’s terrible writing, but symptomatic of a film that wants to feign edginess while sanding down any sharp elements that might lend it legitimate personality. Whereas Snipes and Harrelson shared a hostile rapport born from both their scheming games of one-upmanship and, beneath the surface, their prejudices (and attendant resentments), Jeremy and Kamal harbor no real animosity, thereby neutering everything.
Mushy to its core, White Men Can’t Jump has Jeremy and Kamal strike an alliance in order to enter a two-on-two tournament that’ll net them cash—a bond forged through Jeremy talking up his vegan lifestyle, detoxifying drinks and fondness for meditation, and Kamal brooding about his past mistakes. Rather than making them dramatic equals, though, Barris and Doug Hall’s script only has Jeremy heal and transform Kamal via his unique quirkiness; Kamal makes no real impact on Jeremy, who turns things around on his own as a way of ensuring that his accomplished dancer girlfriend Tatiana (Laura Harrier) doesn’t ditch him because, as he himself says, he’s a “dumb loser.” That he is, and a blandly cartoonish one at that, as Harlow embodies him with a motormouth goofiness that’s less amiable than annoying.
Although its main characters are supposedly in dire financial straits, there’s no actual sense that Kamal and Jeremy are struggling; Kamal’s partner Imani (Teyana Taylor) is a supportive salon owner, and Jeremy is incessantly seen driving around in Tatiana’s dad’s Porsche convertible. White Men Can’t Jump compounds this situation by doing away with its predecessor’s gritty Venice Beach streetball milieu for pristine gyms, outdoor courts and heavily sponsored tournaments that resemble Day-Glo-colored corporate Mountain Dew events.
Director Calmatic sanitizes every aspect of his source material until the entire thing looks, sounds and feels like a Disney sitcom. Thus, it’s no surprise when things get self-help maudlin with Kamal and Jeremy, both of whom must learn to control their anger and overcome their fears—as well as harness their true potential (Kamal) and put others ahead of themselves (Jeremy)—via a collection of slushy incidents regarding loss, disappointment, and failure.
Whether together or apart, Harlow and Walls are pleasant to a fault, neither one brash, funny, or damaged enough to hold one’s attention, much less live up to Harrelson and Snipes. By watering down its characters’ arrogant, reckless attitudes (and criminality), White Men Can’t Jump undercuts its portrait of adversaries becoming allies, along the way embellishing everything with safe racially tinged one-liners that have no bite.
The film’s feel-good tack extends to a happily-ever-after ending that turns it into a fairy tale with no connection to reality, no matter the screenplay’s timely references to TikTok, Venmo, Ed Sheeran, OnlyFans, stem cell treatments and Paul Thomas Anderson and Spike Lee—neither of whom would likely be caught dead within 100 miles of this corny comedy. Vince Staples also pops up in a supporting part, to zero effect.
A second-rate re-do that’s also missing its ancestor’s electric hardcourt action and sexual spark—this despite having Harlow and Harrier rehash Harrelson and firecracker Rosie Perez’s lap-straddling car tryst—White Men Can’t Jump is so uniformly inferior that it casts Shelton’s 1992 hit in an even more flattering light. Its benign dullness is all-consuming, right down to its refusal to make its signature title boast a factor in its routine plot.
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