Uncle Drew

Uncle Drew

Starring Kyrie Irving, Lil Rel Howery, Shaquille O'Neal, Tiffany Haddish

Directed by Charles Stone III

The Story:
Dax (Lil Rey Howery) is a street ball manager who's given up on his dream of being a basketball star after a missed shot made him the laughingstock of the city.  As he's preparing to take his team to the annual Rucker Classic street ball tournament, his team abandons him for his arch rival Mookie (Nick Kroll).

Down on his luck and loosing his girlfriend Jess (Tiffany Haddish), Dax turns to street ball legend Uncle Drew (Kyrie Irving) to play in the tournament.  Uncle Drew enlists his old team - Preacher (Chris Webber), Lights (Reggie Miller), Boots (Nate Robinson), and Big Fella (Shaquille O'Neal) to show the youngbloods what the game of basketball really means.

The Synopsis:
Back in 2004, the auto insurance company Geico released a series of commercials featuring cavemen with the tagline "it's so easy even a caveman can do it."  The commercials were so well received that in 2007, ABC picked up an entire sitcom series based on the aloof stone age men.  The series only lasted one season, and the cavemen returned to extinction where they belonged.

Why did I start out my review with this?  Because in 2012 there was a series of commercials for Pepsi featuring basketball star Kyrie Irving as Uncle Drew, an old basketball player who showed the young basketball players how it's done.  Much like the Geico cavemen, Uncle Drew became a sensation, and this followed up with a full-length movie called "Uncle Drew."  Also much like the Geico cavemen, Uncle Drew worked well in very small doses, but really can't hold a full length film.

That's not to say "Uncle Drew" was terrible.  Personally, I am nowhere near a basketball fan, so going into the film I already had a negative preconceived notion as to what I would be watching.  Yet, despite that (or because of it), I found myself entertained by the film in a different way.  While I didn't find myself laughing one bit, the film did get me thinking about life and how we age, what society sees older people as, and how it's all about your heart - not your age - that determines who you are.

Despite the fact that the script followed like a generic story told through the ages only with different settings (you can see the ending coming like a three point conversion - I'm trying to use sports lingo but I don't think I'm doing it right), it's the heart of the cast that beats strongly, giving you a strong attraction and desire for them to succeed.  The film features some of the best basketball players in recent memory - Kyrie Irving, Chris Webber, Reggie Miller, Shaquille O'Neal, Nate Robinson, and Lisa Leslie - who don old man (and woman) makeup and show that "you don't stop playing because you get old, but you get old because you stop playing."  The prosthetics and makeup used is something that should seriously be considered come Oscar time (I'm being serious, there's a section during the end credits where we see the extreme lengths these people go through to achieve the makeup, and it's absolutely stunning), and each player gives their all in their performance - if only they had more going for them than simple sight gags.

Yes, we know they're old, but they keep beating us over the head with it.  It's an underdog tale of the highest caliber, but the script is so thin you wanted more out of it.  There's several plot twists that are more yawn than gasp, with a generic ending with a pretty little bow wrapped around it.  Still, the charisma the players ooze drenches us in excitement and makes our hearts swell with enjoyment, proving that we don't need to stop doing the things we love because we get older.  The message is important, even if it's delivered as thinly as a piece of string.

Kyrie Irving plays Uncle Drew as an old man wise beyond his years, but also in many ways still a child himself.  He's the glue that holds the team together, but he also struggles with being real.  He has a beef with Shaq's character that was never resolved all those years between, but then in one simple scene the entire conflict is resolved.  Chris Webber plays Preacher, who lives up to the Southern Gospel Preacher stereotype while also mixing in his own blend of basketball humor (his near-dunking of a child in a baptismal tank was the closest I came to chuckling).  Reggie Miller plays Lights, who is legally blind and yet still has a heart of a youngster, while Nate Robinson plays a character pretty much confined to a wheelchair who doesn't utter a sound.  Lisa Leslie plays Preacher's wife, who spends the first half of the film like a wild woman trying to stop Preacher from playing.  It was fun seeing them in action, even if their stories were typical and ordinary.

Then there's the non-basketball players in the film, and as much as I hate to say it, I found them all to be totally insufferable.  Lil Rel Howery is a comedic genius (he was fantastic in "Get Out," and he even mentions seeing the film in the movie), but his character was irritating to say the least, and annoying at best.  We get that he has beef with Mookie from events that happened decades ago, and he still carries it around like a vice around his neck, not to mention he goes from acting superior to inferior in seconds, and yells most of his lines even when he doesn't need to.

Nick Kroll plays Mookie, Dax's arch nemesis, and he's as one-note as they come.  I could only tolerate his character for a few seconds before I wished he would shut up forever.  Tiffany Haddish - who I and most of the world adore - is given nothing more than the squealing, money-hungry girlfriend who flips on a dime when she thinks she can find a better outcome somewhere else.

Speaking of Haddish, the women in the film are highly underappreciated.  Despite being a three-time MVP winner and four-time Olympic gold medal winner, Lisa Leslie's talents aren't even used on the court until the very end.  Haddish, as already stated, has such an underlying character that it's infuriating to see.  Then there's Erica Ash, who plays Boots' granddaughter, who merely exists in the film to be a comfort for Boots and Dax.  Women needed to be represented more here, and it's a darn shame they weren't.

Still, despite this, I still found the film to be an overall enjoyable experience, one that I was pleasantly surprised about.  Would I see it again?  Probably not.  But I didn't leave the theater wanting to bang my head against the wall, so I consider that a win.

The Summary:
Despite a thin plot and more thinly written characterization, "Uncle Drew" had a decent heart at the center, giving a group of charismatic basketball players a new platform to showcase their talents, and prove to us all that age ain't nothing but a number.

The Score: C+