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Uncle Drew
2018's Uncle Drew is a forgettable look at street basketball that falls flat due to an illogical screenplay, lackluster direction, and some really oddball casting.
It's contemporary Harlem and Dax (Lil Rel Howery) is a street basketball hustler with his own team of losers who has lost everything trying to earn the entry fee for a basketball tournament when he accidentally runs into the title character (Kyrie Irving) while he's schooling a young punk on the court. Dax asks Uncle Drew to be on his team but he only agrees under the condition that it's his team and that he recruit his old former teammates to play with him. This springboards a road trip for Dax and Uncle Drew to find Drew's old teammates, including one who is pretty much blind and another who's confined to a wheelchair.
For some reason basketball has never really been a viewer friendly subject for movie comedies. Hoosiers was terrific, but that was a drama. Not too much is very convincing here, especially this central character who is supposed to evoke sympathy because we see him losing control of his life at the beginning of the film, including his girl (Tiffany Haddish) walking out on him, but as we watch his initial confrontation with Uncle Drew we realize why...this character is a self-absorbed jackass who thinks he knows everything about basketball but hasn't stepped on a court for years because many years ago, a crucial shot in a game he was about to win was blocked. It was hard to feel sorry for someone who let one blocked shot keep him off the court permanently.
Jay Longino's screenplay also forces us to accept some really stupid stuff in regards to this rag tag team of senior citizen hoofers. The last straw for me was when Drew gave Boots (Nate Robinson), the wheelchair-bound player, a pair of his old sneakers that Drew saved for 30 years and all of a sudden, the guy could walk. And the moves that these guys, whose average age was 70, were making on the court completely defied logic, not to mention their choreographed dance number on a nightclub dance floor.
Lil Rel Howery is allegedly a funny guy, who was actually given his own sitcom this season, but the guy has failed to make me laugh, either here or on TV. Kyrie Irving's performance in the title role was snore-inducing as was basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal as Big Fella. The only real laughs in this movie came from Nick Kroll, the rival hustler who blocked that crucial shot from Dax all those years ago. In a nutshell, this was one hour and 43 minutes of my life I'll never get back.
2018's Uncle Drew is a forgettable look at street basketball that falls flat due to an illogical screenplay, lackluster direction, and some really oddball casting.
It's contemporary Harlem and Dax (Lil Rel Howery) is a street basketball hustler with his own team of losers who has lost everything trying to earn the entry fee for a basketball tournament when he accidentally runs into the title character (Kyrie Irving) while he's schooling a young punk on the court. Dax asks Uncle Drew to be on his team but he only agrees under the condition that it's his team and that he recruit his old former teammates to play with him. This springboards a road trip for Dax and Uncle Drew to find Drew's old teammates, including one who is pretty much blind and another who's confined to a wheelchair.
For some reason basketball has never really been a viewer friendly subject for movie comedies. Hoosiers was terrific, but that was a drama. Not too much is very convincing here, especially this central character who is supposed to evoke sympathy because we see him losing control of his life at the beginning of the film, including his girl (Tiffany Haddish) walking out on him, but as we watch his initial confrontation with Uncle Drew we realize why...this character is a self-absorbed jackass who thinks he knows everything about basketball but hasn't stepped on a court for years because many years ago, a crucial shot in a game he was about to win was blocked. It was hard to feel sorry for someone who let one blocked shot keep him off the court permanently.
Jay Longino's screenplay also forces us to accept some really stupid stuff in regards to this rag tag team of senior citizen hoofers. The last straw for me was when Drew gave Boots (Nate Robinson), the wheelchair-bound player, a pair of his old sneakers that Drew saved for 30 years and all of a sudden, the guy could walk. And the moves that these guys, whose average age was 70, were making on the court completely defied logic, not to mention their choreographed dance number on a nightclub dance floor.
Lil Rel Howery is allegedly a funny guy, who was actually given his own sitcom this season, but the guy has failed to make me laugh, either here or on TV. Kyrie Irving's performance in the title role was snore-inducing as was basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal as Big Fella. The only real laughs in this movie came from Nick Kroll, the rival hustler who blocked that crucial shot from Dax all those years ago. In a nutshell, this was one hour and 43 minutes of my life I'll never get back.