Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hour, 43 minutes
Director: Charles Stone III
Quick Impressions:
I used to watch basketball with my grandpa. I vividly remember hanging out up in his bedroom watching the 1989 NBA finals, the Lakers (his team) versus the Pistons (who won). I wasn’t exactly what you’d call a follower of the sport. I did enjoy playing basketball at school (because I’m good at running around looking like I’m trying to do something), and even to this day, I can usually make baskets successfully as long as nobody tries to stop me. (To put this in perspective, consider that I once got a 42 on a volleyball skills test, and I sometimes can’t make the baseball bat connect with the ball when I play with my son. And, I mean, it’s tee ball, so…)
Grandpa knew all the important stuff, and I tried to pay attention. I remember it was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s last season. Magic Johnson also played for the Lakers then, his shocking HIV reveal still a couple of years away. Playing for the Pistons were the dynamic Isiah Thomas and The Microwave (the same height as my grandpa, 6’2”, but shockingly considered short in the NBA).
I also remember the time Grandpa talked the whole second quarter about how he was going to make us these amazing sundaes at half time, which he did–vanilla ice cream, marshmallow cream, cherries, fudge–and then my mother wouldn’t let me eat mine.
“She can’t have ice cream twice in one day,” she said, a rule that I’d never heard of before (probably because it had never come up).
“But I didn’t have ice cream yesterday! I didn’t have ice cream the day before!” I kept protesting. None of this mattered. Grandpa (who felt terrible about the whole thing) had already prepared both sundaes, so he just scooped mine into his bowl and ate both of them (apologizing after every bite, kind of like Homer Simpson saying, “I’m sorry,” to Rod and Todd after kicking Ned Flanders out of his own bomb shelter).
Anyway, Uncle Drew is really the perfect movie to watch if, like me, you love basketball because it makes you think of your grandpa, and you love your grandpa.
My husband and I have both (unbeknownst to one another) wanted to see this silly basketball comedy ever since first watching the omnipresent trailer. It just looked like such goofy, good-natured fun to me. The two of us have been saying, “Unnncle Drewwwww!” in the cadence of the trailer all week (to the extent that our daughter pointedly asked us to stop). But sometimes it’s nice to watch something totally pretense free, a popcorn flick that has the unabashed raison d’être of making Pepsi commercials come to life, letting both the sports celebrity cast and the average movie audience have fun. Plus, I really liked Lil Rel Howard in Get Out. (And we get a meta joke about that. It’s great!)
I expected fun, which the movie definitely delivers. But I had no idea Uncle Drew would also be so sweet and sentimental and stirring. It actually made me cry several times (though, granted, this was all because I kept remembering one key flashback over and over again).
I also kept thinking, “What a triumph for Shaquille O’Neal!” He clearly loves being in movies. Uncle Drew finally gives him a part worthy of his enthusiasm.
The Good:
You don’t have to be a huge basketball fan to enjoy this movie. I haven’t watched much basketball since my grandpa died in December of 1996. (My husband and I always say we should get into basketball, but it just never seems to happen.) A lot of big names of the game appear in Uncle Drew and not just on the roster of the Harlem Buckets. I didn’t know all of them, and it didn’t matter (though I imagine the more faces you know, the more fun it would be).
Tonally (and also in terms of plot) Uncle Drew has a lot in common with Happy Gilmore. Instead of an outside-the-box golfer trying to win the big tournament, we have an outside-the-box street ball team trying to win the big tournament. But the senselessly obnoxious opponent and the tugs-at-your-heartstrings underdog heroes are present in both stories.
All of the basketball stars do pretty well in their roles, and the make-up and prosthetics used to age them looks surprisingly good. Kyrie Irving makes an appealing Uncle Drew. I like his understated yet commanding line delivery, the way he calls everyone, “Young blood,” and his quiet, reflective manner off the court.
To be honest, I was surprised that the acting from the star athletes was so good. (I mean, Michael Jordan may be very charismatic in Space Jam, but you wouldn’t expect him to give an Oscar winning performance any more than you’d expect Meryl Streep to score 38 points with the flu in the NBA finals the summer after I graduated from high school in what was like the best game ever. Talent in one area doesn’t guarantee talent in another. You can’t just let Yo-Yo Ma and Usain Bolt swap lives and expect great results.)
Director Charles Stone III takes a very wise approach. The best actors get the showiest parts, and when the emotional intensity ratchets up, the characters become increasingly taciturn, sometimes even silent. The thing is, silence always works. If circumstances are serious enough, they speak for themselves. If we hear about something heart-wrenching or severe, the audience can fill in the gaps and still experience the full emotional impact of the situation as long as the actors say little or remain silent.
The scene featuring Shaquille O’Neal and Kyrie Irving at the grave site is a prime example of this. The two men say very little, but the little they do say is a big deal, and the situation does the work for them. Watching, I thought, “It’s just wonderful that Shaquille O’Neal can get a huge, dramatic scene like this,” since he’s not known for his talent as a dramatic actor, but he loves making movies so much. He plays this really well and ends up as the focus of one of the most moving moments in the film. Because the director understands how best to use the talent his cast brings, the movie’s big names shine in their roles, and all the key moments work.
So Reggie Miller gamely cracked me up as Lights, and Nate Robinson sold the character of Boots by doing very little at all the right moments. These two characters work really well, but the roles demand little of the stars because the script and the performance of actress Erica Ash (as the devoted granddaughter) handle most of the hard parts.
But from the athletes, the showiest turn by far belongs to Chris Webber as Preacher. That big, crazy, confident performance is far more daring that anything a reasonable audience would expect from an NBA star appearing in a summer blockbuster. Webber is crazily animated and extremely funny. I’d gladly watch him in anything, and I would have loved his performance here even if he weren’t a big name of basketball. Lisa Leslie is also good as his extremely devoted and unusually persistent wife Betty Lou. (Again, though, the director and script set up a situation that is funny and entertaining itself, asking relatively little of the actors. I kept wondering as I watched if these chase sequences were inspired in part by The Muppet Movie.)
As for the non NBA celebrity actors, Erica Ash is extremely compelling, Tiffany Haddish goes all out to be horrible, and Nick Kroll is almost too much (though I did find one of his particularly bold throw-away one liners much funnier than it should have been).
The real star of the film, though, is Lil Rel Howery as Dax, the character whose story genuinely moved me. Howery gives a fantastic performance, following through on all the emotionally rich potential suggested by the character’s heartstring-tugging backstory. In Happy Gilmore (which is, overall, far funnier than this film) even the character’s desperation to save his grandma is played for humor. (We’re not meant to laugh at his devotion to her, but it’s not meant truly to move us, either.) But Dax’s backstory is not funny at all, and the way the traumas of his past continue to scar him and affect his decision making genuinely moved me. I felt for this guy. I liked him. I was deeply invested in his sadness. In the middle of this zany, dress-up basketball comedy, we get a real person who just wants to be loved and has never belonged to a family before. It’s a great performance by Howery, who is also expected to supply most of the funny dialogue in the movie.
Often, we get shots of the van in motion, showing no one’s face, and we hear Howery talking, delivering some of the funniest lines in the whole film. I started to wonder, “At some point in the editing process, did they say, ‘Okay, this movie is not funny enough. Where can we cram in some additional jokes?’ And then maybe did they just have Howery ad-lib a bunch of funny material and insert it into the movie?” I don’t know that that’s what happened, but that’s certainly how it looks. Either way, Howery is the MVP of this movie. I hope he continues to get starring roles in big projects.
I also found the entire vibe of Uncle Drew extremely relaxing and easy to watch. I mean, the big, bright van, the bold colors, the entire soundtrack. It takes a while for Uncle Drew to become funny, but it’s never taxing or onerous. Start to finish, it’s a pretty fun, escapist experience.
Best Scene:
I love the flashback/dream sequence Dax experiences near the beginning of the film. So quickly, it tells us everything we need to know to understand this man. It’s also done in such an artful way. The fact that this too quick montage feels creepy and like a genuine nightmare is also strangely almost funny. I never expected a scene so artful in this type of movie. It works so well that it haunted me for the rest of the film and made me truly invested in Dax and sympathetic to all his difficulties.
Best Action Sequence:
Everything involving the preacher and wife—that baptism, all of the crazy chase scenes—are the best action scenes we get off the court in this film.
Best Scene Visually:
I love the overall big, bright, bold, orange-van aesthetic of Uncle Drew, but I also like the way the movie sets up jokes, punchlines, even plot points visually.
I love the introduction of Lights throwing balls all over the arcade. Not only is it funny, but it also tells us crucial information quickly. We learn something key about Lights. We also get huge insight into the character of Maya. And we get a nice bit of foreshadowing, too. The scene does so much for us, and yet so little is actually said.
The scene of the plan to boost Boots also shows us as much as it tells us, and so does the basketball for gas money moment.
In terms of just looking cool, though, the dance sequence in the club is pretty fun to watch as is the hospital gown bit.
The Negatives:
For a comedy, Uncle Drew is not all that funny right away. It really doesn’t become consistently laugh-inducing until the road trip is underway, and they’re in the process of picking up Preacher. That’s okay because the movie is so pleasant and the character of Dax is so sympathetic and compelling. But in a comedy, funnier is always better.
Probably the worst thing I can say about this movie is that I don’t think I’d have an interest in watching it not in the theater. The whole point of movies like this is to see them on the big screen. Uncle Drew is so zany and fun, but the whole basketball-stars-in-disguise bit is really funniest as a summer popcorn entertainment experience up on the big screen.
“But no,” I thought as I watched. “It would also be good as part of a themed movie block or film festival.” That’s when I started to notice its similarities to Happy Gilmore. My point though is that it’s more of an event—a fun activity to do with friends—than a film.
And yet, Lil Rel Howery is genuinely fantastic, and his character makes the story (which does have several great morals) quite moving.
Overall:
I came away from Uncle Drew thinking that Lil Rel Howery is even more talented than I realized from his memorable work in Get Out. I was also impressed by director Charles Stone III who uses his cast so well and often lets the situation do the work. The movie was fun to watch, and it made me cry (copiously) as I felt for the troubled protagonist and remembered watching basketball with my much missed grandpa.