By Marc S. Sanders
I’m not enamored so much by sports unless they are dramatized effectively in the movies. If I can see Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes making magnificent trick shots with a basketball in White Men Can’t Jump, my attention will be had. There’s lot of street corner basketball depicted in Ron Shelton’s film and for the most part it is sensational and quite funny when partnered with the on court ribbing that guys toss at one another. This film arrived with the oncoming trend of “Your momma is so…” insults, which still bring out the sophomoric glee in me.
Fortunately, White Men Can’t Jump doesn’t just rely on the basketball antics. There’s a good set up here and some well-drawn characters. It’s one flaw may be that I think the film overstays its welcome. Just when you think the picture is over and every loose end is tied, a new development occurs. That’s because every sports movie demands a final championship game. Who made up that stupid rule?
Billy Hoyle (Harrelson) makes quick cash on the court by being the fish out of water on Venice Beach. He’s the pasty white kid with the dorky rainbow-colored cap that any urban black athlete will happily challenge for a game of one on one or two on two. That’s the trick to his con because he’s a magnificent player actually, and regular player and loudmouth Sidney Deane (Snipes) sees an opportunity for them to partner up and clean up. Like most competitive sports, you gotta taunt your opponent and when they have gone overboard, you lay on your conceit and declare that you can beat them any day with any guy they choose to partner them up with, such as the blond, white guy sitting on the bench doing morning stretches.
They each have their own motivations. Billy is up to his neck in debt to some bookies who he wouldn’t throw a game for. They are ready to collect or shoot him in the head, or both. His girlfriend Gloria (Rosie Perez in a standout performance) aspires to land a spot on Jeopardy!. Sidney lives with his wife Rhonda (Tyra Ferrell) and baby in the criminal area of Watts. She’s pressuring him to get them out of the slums and buy a house in a nice neighborhood.
At first, the cons work for the pair, but the question is can Billy and Sidney trust one another. Will they scam each other while trying to work together?
Ron Shelton’s script works because it turns in various directions when you do not expect it. These are unusual characters. Lovable, but not all that they seem either and they are built with flaws that will undo them while they try to make a further leap ahead. Billy is a smart kid on the court but he’s not smart with money like Gloria. Sidney is smart at putting up the façade of a dumb loudmouth on the court but that’s his M.O. for being a responsible family man. Gloria seems like a zany dingbat on the surface but she may be the smartest character of them all. It’s definately not because she has memorized every kind of food that begins with the letter Q for the game show. She has true instincts and knows to see through the B.S. of people that her boyfriend Billy can’t.
White Men Can’t Jump is a both a con movie and a sports movie, but it’s not the greatest of each of those categories. Still, it’s very, very entertaining thanks to Harrelson, Snipes and Perez working in top form. Wesley Snipes is doing the fast-talking wise ass routine that Eddie Murphy built his career on. You don’t see this kind of guy in every Wesley Snipes movie though, like you do in Murphy’s films. That’s what impresses me with Wesley Snipes. He’s not known to be an Eddie Murphy or a Chris Rock. He’s an actor, not a comedian, and yet he’d convince me otherwise if this was the only performance I ever saw.
Other than his obvious role in Cheers, Harrelson normally portrays smarter guys. Billy is smart, but he lacks instinct and not just with money but with how he considers Gloria. The best thing Ron Shelton could have done after perfectly casting this trio was to give these characters heart followed by the flaws that weigh them down. All that maintains what could have been a one note and flat story.
However, the film runs a little longer than I cared for. While basketball is at the forefront of the script, I believed the film was concluding when I saw the two guys had finally grown up and learned. Only then, a new development occurs for Sidney and his family. Suddenly, it’s up to the two guys to get back together for one more game. I didn’t need that one more game. I had my fill and that final tournament is shot in slow motion – literally every shot the guys make, and I’m starting to lose my patience. Don’t get me wrong. I’m impressed. Harrelson and Snipes are not stunt doubled. That’s them doing the doing the shots and accomplishing enormous efforts of agility to wow the audience. They’re great, but by this point, I had seen enough basketball to deliver the message and I found the tacked-on twenty-minute epilogue mostly unnecessary.
Granted some may argue that something occurs in that last game to justify the literal title of the movie. I know what you’re talking about. Yet, that could have been covered a lot more efficiently, I believe. Less would have been more in this situation.
White Men Can’t Jump is great comedic entertainment, full of improvised dialogue and characters that are easy to like while keeping up a skeptical guard on them. That’s good. It states that Shelton’s characters are complex and that holds my interest. Even the extras are ones to appreciate in their sweaty t-shirts while delivering urban vernacular to harass one another. It’s a great culture to get a peek into. I love the one guy who is a sore loser and whips out his knife, but then just as his girl calms him down, he says forget the knife. He’s gonna get his gun. I challenge anyone not to laugh as all the other guys on the playground make a mad dash escape in a hundred different directions. It would likely go down this way. We hear of violent stabbings and shootings all the time. In this movie however, Ron Shelton and his cast find the natural humor of this opposing conflict.
I guess that’s the best compliment I can give the writer/director. He didn’t sensationalize his characters. Ron Shelton has a way of just letting his creatures of the court play. Into—the—basket it goes.
SWISH!!!! It works.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 