Urine Couch AM Movie Club: White Men Can't Jump

1992 black supremacy manifesto

Rating: 13/20

Plot: The bartender from Cheers and his annoying girlfriend have built up a serious debt and are each trying to fix their financial woes just like any normal person would. No, they don't get jobs. She studies and dreams of an appearance on Jeopardy while he hustles on the basketball court. He meets the other guy on the poster (the black one) who in the movie is named Black Guy and hustles him out of a little bit of money. Black Guy finds him and persuades him to partner up and split their earnings. Then, there's a bunch of movie problems.

1992. That's when I graduated from high school. I could jump about as well as Woody and even got to the point where I could dunk a volleyball every once in a while which, let me tell you, was impressive for all the ladies. They'd say, "Oh, my! Did you see that skinny guy just strain to dunk that volleyball with one hand on that rim that's a little bent? And now he's clutching his side like he's pulled something. That is so hot!"

Fast forward to 2011. This movie makes me feel old, and the fact that I watched it at this stage in my life while sitting in the lobby of a motel that I'm supposed to be working at should depress the hell out of me. This is what my life has become? I also have serious doubts about my abilities to dunk a volleyball every once in a while and suspect that if I attempted the feat, I would more than likely injure myself and/or others. And break into tears. "Oh, my! Did you see that tubby guy hit the bottom of the rim on that 9-foot goal with a volleyball? And now he's rolling around on the ground crying! That is so hot!"

I like the basketball scenes in the first half of the movie, but by the end of the movie, I'm a little tired of them. I get it. These guys can do fancy basketball moves in slow motion. I also like the two leads--W-squared--and thought they had a nice rapport. Their game looks legit, too. I didn't necessarily like either their characters, however, and Rosie Perez needed her volume turned down a few notches. Wesley played a guy who I just couldn't connect with, probably because I'm a bigot, and I didn't want him succeeding by the end of this movie. And Woody's character (Woody) was so stupid, and not much of his trials and tribulations seemed all that realistic. When he reaches a low point in this movie, it just comes so fast (movie fast!) and since you know he's going to come out the other end alright because that's the type of movie this is, there's almost no tension at all. This whole thing has this Hollywood sheen that makes the screen kind of sticky actually. The Hollywood street ball looks good, but the trash talk seems so scripty a lot of the times. And that's even with me suspecting that a lot of it was improvised. This doesn't really work as a drama or as a comedy (I didn't laugh once although Gene Siskel giggled so much that he started drooling a little bit), but it does have a certain charm and has some fun basketball moments.

I also gave this movie a bonus point right away when I saw the turban-wearing street musician who roller-skates around Venice Beach, a dude I saw during my trip their in 1988 when I bought a pink tie-dyed shirt that looked like something Woody's character (Woody) would have worn. That shirt increased my vertical by 3/4 of an inch!