Mark Reviews Movies: UNCLE DREW

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 28, 2018

Uncle Drew is exactly what one would expect of a movie produced by a soft drink company and based on a character created for a series of commercials for said company. To name the company in a review would be to give its executives exactly what they want: more attention. It would also be pretty redundant for those who know about the commercials and especially for those who have seen the movie. There's no attempt to hide the origins of the movie's eponymous character. There's hardly a scene that passes by without some blatant advertising for the company or featuring the logos and/or products of other companies that thought this would be a good way to sell their own stuff.

As for the movie itself, well, it was clearly made on the cheap and on the quick. It's a sports story about an underdog coach who recruits an underdog team of players in their 70s to win a basketball tournament. The gimmick is that the elderly players are portrayed by current and retired professional basketball players in really unconvincing old-age makeup. The movie's central joke is the same thing: Here are some guys who have been made up to look as if they couldn't play basketball well, but the not-so-surprising surprise is that they're really, really great at the game.

The rest of the story is cobbled together as a road trip, followed by an extended sequence of montages of the guys dominating the competition in the tournament. The comedy is so bad that screenwriter Jay Longino and director Charles Stone III have the movie's lead character, a washed-up basketball player who has turned to coaching in an effort to win the tournament's prize money, vocalize exactly what is or has happened on screen. The filmmakers apparently never learned the lesson that, if you have to repeat or explain a joke, it probably wasn't funny in the first place.

The protagonist is Dax (Lil Rel Howery), a shoe store salesman living in Harlem and hoping to catch his big break by winning the annual Rucker Classic, a basketball tournament based in the borough's Rucker Park. He thinks he has a good shot, considering his star player Casper (Aaron Gordon) is a star-in-the-making. His opportunity is smashed when his rival coach Mookie (Nick Kroll), who blocked Dax's potentially game-winning shot when the two were teenagers, steals Dax's team and, later, his spend-happy girlfriend Jess (Tiffany Haddish).

While looking for replacements, Dax discovers Uncle Drew (Kyrie Irving), a 75-year-old man who schools a younger guy on the court. The man is presented as a legendary, near-mythical figure in the movie's prologue, a faux documentary that gives us the minimal details of his past and few pieces of trivia. Among the former is the fact that he and his friends could have won the tournament decades ago, but the team didn't show up to play. Among the latter is the detail that the NBA logo was based on him—only they shaved his afro. There's also the legend that he once beat a guy in a one-on-one match using only his non-dominant hand. His right hand was busy holding a ham sandwich.

That introduction is the funniest thing here. The rest of the story has Dax and his new player finding Uncle Drew's old crew. Preacher (Chris Webber) is indeed a preacher now, married to Betty Lou (Lisa Leslie) and baptizing babies as if he's doing tricks with a basketball. Big Fella (Shaquille O'Neal) is a karate instructor who still holds a grudge against Drew for reasons involving a woman. Lights (Reggie Miller) is now legally blind, and Boots (Nate Robinson) is confined to a wheelchair.

Obviously, the obstacles of age and physical handicap disappear with almost magical ease once the tournament begins (Lights gets prescription goggles, and Boots' old sneakers allow him to get out of the wheelchair and play). Drew preaches a pure love for the game and offers maxims of simple wisdom (e.g., "You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take"), while the movie itself fits company advertising in every available part of the frame during the games and doesn't have the good sense to provide any tension, to construct any decent gags, or to disregard a single cliché in scripting its story.

The games themselves are staged as showcases for the players-turned-actors to display their prowess. That's to be expected, but it certainly doesn't give us any sense of a challenge for lengthy climactic moments. Uncle Drew is too busy selling a lot of things, and one of them definitely isn't a reason for itself.

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