New Movie Alert! White Men Can’t Jump

White Men Can’t Jump

2023

Comedy / Drama / Sport.

Plot summary

A remake of the 1992 film about a pair of basketball hustlers who team up to earn extra cash.

Movie Reviews

5 / 10

Tedious basketball scenes and witless dialogue

Here is a charmless remake that has the same ideas and characters as the original, but none of the energy. Director Calmatic’s idea of a sports film is to put a rap soundtrack on and show us poorly shot and edited basketball scenes that are tedious to follow and care for.There are lots of rambling in this movie. This is not necessarily a complaint. There are lots and lots of trash talk in the original White Men Can’t Jump too, except those are brought with wit and delivered by actors that know how to act intimidating and over-confident. The actors here are as flat as cardboard. Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrellson are way out of Sinqua Walls and Jack Harlow’s league.

So the story involves Harlow and Walls teaming up to play basketball. That’s about it for the movie’s depth of storytelling. The screenplay here has barely any emotional engagement. In the climax of the movie, in what was supposedly the high point of the movie, I felt nothing. Any other viewer will not feel anything. Not even our characters look like they felt anything. It’s all a lazy string of basketball montages and dialogue so monotonous and uninteresting that it plays like a conversation you are stuck in and want to get out of.

This is a movie that thinks it has really cool vibe but is just a slog. Calmatic’s previous film is House Party, another remake of a (somewhat) classic. Maybe it is time for him to work with materials that are at least original. Maybe remakes like this shouldn’t exist for the best.