Uncle Drew can't buy a bucket

Kyrie Irving in Uncle Drew. Image courtesy Lionsgate.

There is something at least mildly intriguing about the Uncle Drew commercials. For a piece of pure commercialism, they have a little soul and grit, a little mystery hidden underneath the inherent silliness of the premise. The cinematography is exceptional for a commercial, depicting the simple beauty of a basketball court at night. The ads do little to hide their nature (I doubt people are chugging Pepsi Max at courts across the country), but for commercials those nuggets are chill and cool and still fun to watch.

And yet none of that translates into Uncle Drew, the feature-length adaptation of the commercial series. Despite ripping off the story arc of the Pepsi commercials, the movie adaptation went in a far more comedic, broad direction. The smooth simplicity of the Pepsi Max commercials are gone, replaced by forced wackiness, weak sauce storytelling, and stale old-man jokes. Even as vessels to sell a bland Pepsi product, the commercials are far, far superior than the cinematic adaptation, a rather disturbing fact that results in an often disheartening cinematic viewing experience.

In both the commercials and the movie, Uncle Drew is a streetball legend (played by Celtics point guard Kyrie Irving) who goes around basketball courts across the country to school some uneducated, impetuous ballers. The plot basically follows the story from the commercials, with Uncle Drew running back his old squad back (older versions of former NBA players Chris Webber, Nate Robinson, Reggie Miller, and Shaq, as well as WNBA great Lisa Leslie) for a tournament at the legendary Rucker Park. They're playing on behalf of the desperate Dax (Lil Rel Howery), whose star player Casper (Orlando Magic forward Aaron Gordon) and the rest of his team is swiped by longtime rival Mookie (Nick Kroll). Dax's girlfriend Jess (Tiffany Haddish) also dumps him early on, but he meets the far cooler Maya (Erica Ash) in the second act, and they inevitably hook up after Dax hits the big shot to end the big game.

As a film, Uncle Drew is pretty dire. None of the basketball players save Webber (who gets the best line of the movie) can act, and much of their activities on screen amount to time consumption.The plot is carried by sport clichés and even more filler that makes for what feel like an endless movie. Writer Jay Longino's script is covered in illogical decisions, gaping holes in continuity, and uninteresting, exposition inflated dialog. There are jokes that appear on occasion, which are immediately commented on by Dax to undermine whatever humor might have existed in the first place. It’s easy to tell Howery is trying to improvise throughout, despite the absence of decent material to spin off from. Director Charles Stone III seems unenthusiastic about his material, and it shows in the film's overarching sloppiness and laziness. As a basic piece of filmmaking, Uncle Drew fails phenomenally.

Yet even all of the sloppiness and laziness can’t strip Uncle Drew of its unadulterated love for basketball. The movie hints at an interesting idea about how basketball is a cornerstone for a community, a sport people can gather together to admire athletic brilliance and smooth crossovers. Uncle Drew is pretty OK when it puts the camera in front of the players and just shoots the game, giving its players some time to shine. And even if the cast can’t act, they can all ball, with Irving showcasing his splendid handle and Webber capturing glimpses of his unique brilliance as a player. Even Gordon, completely wasted on the Orlando Magic, gets a few moments to shine. The glimpses of these players messing around the court are the closest Uncle Drew gets to having a highlight. 

 

A smarter filmmaker would make the court the soul of this movie. Alas, the basketball is dispiritingly sparse in Uncle Drew. The movie talks about the spirituality of the sport without really showing the effects it has on the soul. Rucker Park is a great setting for a movie like this because of how much it embodies the sense community the sport can breed, yet the movie hardly takes advantage of having such a splendid church to pray in. There might be something to Uncle Drew if the basketball came first; the movie still wouldn't be good, but it would at least be something worth watching.

Review: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 103 minutes

Genre: Comedy

tl;dr

What Worked: Chris Webber, Tiffany Haddish, Nick Kroll, the basketball

What Sucked: The plot, the jokes, Kyrie Irving's old-man voice, Shaq's old-man makeup

Watch Instead: Blues Brothers, Love & Basketball, Gunnin' for That #1 Spot, Above the Rim

Get Out delivers multitude of horrors

Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

It's pretty easy to see the objectives writer/director Jordan Peele wants to accomplish in his excellent feature debut, Get Out. He shows it in the first scene, where a random African-American man walks down a seemingly peaceful street at night, muttering to himself about being lost as a car ominously drives in the background. Peele, most renowned for his work with Keegan-Michael Key on Key and Peele, plays up the odd humor of the scenario before letting the horror swoop in, all the while playing with the audience's perception on horror conventions. A well-lit suburb at night is about as safe as a place can get, as long as you're white.

The horror Peele mines for Get Out is rooted in the black experience in an extremely white environment, which is the case when photographer Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) spends the weekend with his white girlfriend Rose's (Allison Williams) family (parents Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener and a younger brother played by Caleb Landry Jones) somewhere in the woods. The whole experience is peculiar (as a friend of Chris played by LilRel Howry points out emphatically), but Peele makes it difficult for his protagonist to tell whether or not the situation is based on sinister motivations or the awkwardness from his hosts as indicated through their frequent dips into casual racism. The gap between the two is razor thin from an outside view, with clumsy good intentions and legitimate evil difficult to parse out. Using the slightly off concept is a standard horror trick built to disorient the protagonist and the audience, but Peele employs it as a way of seeing the world through his character's eyes, a clever trick to get one of his main points across.

Peele has many points to make with Get Out, and he uses uses horror as a vehicle for his social commentary about the complexities of racism. One of the most troubling points he makes comes from the fates of servants Walter and Georgina (Marcus Henderson and Betty Gabriel, respectively), the only two black characters Chris comes into regular contact with after leaving the city with Rose. Their behavior is remarkably discomfiting, exacerbating the overarching weirdness Chris absorbs, but the horror truly arrives when the reason for their odd behavior is revealed. It takes a second to think about it, but once that twist comes and the ramifications of it begin to permeate into the mind, the lack of respect held toward those characters becomes borderline heartbreaking. That’s an underlying theme for this film, in which the scares and fears are reinforced by tragedy.

Get Out is scary to think about, but it also offers its fair share of top notch horror. The film goes heavy on the psychological scares, showcasing the queer ambiance along with a few innovative ideas thrown in to ratchet up the anxiety. An impromptu therapy session between Chris and Keener's psychiatrist Missy results in some subtly bothersome imagery and the most menacing cup of tea ever depicted in film. It takes an innovative filmmaker to transform tea into a tool for evil, and it takes a damn good one to make it work. There is a battle though between serving the horror and throwing in a few laughs to lighten the proceedings and play more directly into Peele's background. It is a tough line to define given how easy it is for horror to devolve into comedy unintentionally, but he more often than not pulls off the tonal shifts with aplomb. He succeeds by having done some homework prior to filming, using some horror tropes (like the menacing groundskeeper) as a way of deriving laughs from the audience while still using them as a way of contributing to the atmosphere. It is funny to see the groundskeeper stare as Chris arrives with Rose, but the look he gives and his general reaction remain eerie regardless of how it’s played. The comedy feeds the horror, which later feeds the comedy that in turn feeds the horror, an ouroboros of emotional fluctuations.

There is a lot to unpack with Get Out and admittedly even more a person could sift through with additional viewings. It’s worth it for the intellectual challenge it offers, yet it does so without skimping on the horrors. Get Out is the ideal horror film, showing what a talented filmmaker can do with a proper understanding of the genre’s depths.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 103 minutes

Genre: Horror

Ask Away

Target audience: Definitely great for horror junkies.

Take the whole family?: It gets pretty gory right around the end, albeit not quite enough to necessarily warrant an R rating. Around age 13 is more than fine.  

Theater or Netflix?: A theater trip would be appropriate for people who like horror.

What else does this film do well?: One of the things Jordan Peele excels at is subtly breaking down horror conventions. There are a few moments where the audience is trained to expect something bad to happen at that moment, only for it to serve as a vital plot point. It is pretty interesting to watch the audience react to its non-reaction, and it becomes a moment worth appreciating once the importance of the scene comes into play.

Watch this as well?: Get Out owes a bit of debt to the Invasion of the Body Snatchers films, along with the original Stepford Wives. For a movie with a similar sense of atmosphere, check out the great House of the Devil.