'White Men Can't Jump' misses, but not quite as badly as you expect
When’s the last time a movie was remade and you said, “Oh, yeah, that’s perfect. They definitely should have done that”?
It doesn’t happen. The motivation for a do-over is usually to capitalize on the built-in audience, not to actually try to improve something that can be sensibly improved with the benefit of time, technology, whatever. Even when it goes well (the Coens’ “True Grit,” the new “Footloose,” which most liked less than I did), it’s not as if the creative community simply would have had a permanent hole if not for a new filmmaker’s version of an old movie. (Or, in the case of Michael Haneke’s second version of his own “Funny Games,” the same filmmaker.)
All that is to say that, no, of course no one needed to remake 1992’s terrifically entertaining “White Men Can’t Jump,” and you can very easily make the argument that no one should have. But as far as properties that could theoretically receive a new perspective more than 30 years later, it’s not unreasonable to think that there could be something update-able to a story touching on the intersection of race and sports, dreams and financial hardship, and all of the above as a component of the so-called American dream that usually doesn’t play out that way for so many.
Raise your hand if you’re surprised that the new version, now on Hulu and directed by the same guy (Calmatic) as the “House Party” remake, doesn’t exactly work up a sweat in the ideas department.
The best part is the casting: Taking over for the irreplaceable Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson, Sinqua Walls and rapper Jack Harlow are Kamal (a former top high school prospect whose anger and arrest made him more of a never-was than a has-been) and Jeremy (a standout college player who tore both ACLs), respectively. Sports movies hinge on rooting for whoever we’re supposed to be rooting for, and I did. In contrasting Kamal’s need for calm and Jeremy’s need for energy, writers Kenya Barris and Doug Hall (“Black-ish”) create a complementary contrast that suits the actors well, even if much of the narrative, including the pairing of Kamal and Jeremy, feels lazily inevitable rather than clear and convincing.
Worse, what was previously a lively and funny movie is now awkward and obnoxious whenever it goes for a laugh (fun to see rapper Vince Staples playing one of Kamal’s friends/teammates, though), and the movie’s effort to update racial perspective is mostly just Jeremy reminding Kamal repeatedly that notions about white guys not being able to play ball are outdated. But it’s also hard to ignore that the new “White Men Can’t Jump” exists more as a nostalgic wink than a modern examination of race or basketball or much of anything. The story isn’t willing to go anywhere challenging or useful, and it doesn’t.
That doesn’t mean the original spent a ton of time commenting on race in America or L.A. in the early ‘90s. But when the remake engages with contemporary issues, like a painfully bad moment when the film tries to get a laugh out of a character not knowing what Jeremy is carrying on him (fearing a gun, which he’s not) and saying that’s why they don’t trust white people, you wish they wouldn’t even bother.
There should be no doubt that the concern is real. But it’s one of many times when “White Men Can’t Jump” feebly launches a joke and is lucky if it even glances the rim.
C
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