ViewGuide

Created May 03, 2013 11:24AM PST • Edited May 27, 2019 02:31PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Ron Shelton made White Men Can’t Jump after Bull Durham and before Tin Cup. His sequence of great sports movies is thus baseball, basketball, golf. This middle one – his hoops hit – nailed the J with its title, even if the rest veers from perfection.

   White Men Can’t Jump was welcomed into the HoopFlick Hall of Fame nonetheless. Crossing over to the mainstream, partly due to major moviestar charisma, it had sociological cred on top of it all. Swoosh. The latter came from taking on how Blacks saw Whites, albeit through the narrow prism of basketball, which was just then becoming a mainstream cultural phenomenon due to the ascendence of Air Jordan.

   IOW, what we’ve got here is a white filmmaker who done Spike Lee. Done him great, I say.

   SWOOSH. Game!

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Wesley Snipes & Tyra Ferrell, Woody Harrelson & Rosie Perez are the couples in question. The guys are top-level street hoopsters, which makes for a hot foursome, Rosie Perez’s chiquita the hottest of the bunch.

   But it’s Woody and Wesley’s movie, proving to be a major career boost for each. Both are really great, with their screen wives a tick behind.

   The sound track features the late Lakers’ announcer Chick Hearn on the call. Even though just a snippet, it’s enough to get hoops fans like me pumped.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Shelton does basketball – street ball, L.A. style, with Jordan & Johnson jerseys worn by trash talking hustlers. The vibe is exuberantly over-the-top, amped up, starting with the title. Likewise, it’s a very talky film, perhaps too talky, but that’s Shelton. The guy can write, especially about provocations leading to over-reactions.

    It’s also a classic awkward buddy movie, a form that is terrifically effective when well executed, kind of the pick-and-roll of cinema.

    Finally, the closing credits include “Thanks to L.A. Parks and recreations, and to Venice Beach, Watts and South Central”. Thus it’s no suprise that the film feels of its place.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Good 3.0

    Behold a white man writing black man lines and female lines. Ron Shelton gets outside himself more and better than most writers, writing away from self being pretty much the opposite of what every writing teacher recommends.

13. Music Perfect 5.0

    Woody’s character plays He Stopped Loving Her Today to piss-off Wesley’s character. As it happens, that song is a signature of the late great George Jones, who died the day I viewed this.

    The movie features Hendrix early on, a common touch point for the White and Black ballplayers, and then climaxes to a Hendrix-like guitar jam.

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    First rate hoops action, street style. 14 Ballplayers saw to that.

    The movie increasingly looks like a period piece from the near past, back when cassettes got popped into car stereos.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.6

    More profane than erotic, White Men Can’t Jump is plenty of both.

17. Sex Erotic 2.8

18. Violence Fierce 1.7

19. Rudeness Profane 3.3

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    Remarkably real for a movie so over-the-top.

    That said, it turns out white men can jump, as many a pale player has proven in the two decades since White Men Can’t Jump opened in theaters. While the average black baller still skies higher than the average white one, it’s no longer unusual to see sub-7 foot white guys jam with ease.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.7

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0