It’s been a full 31 years since 20th Century Fox released White Men Can’t Jump; a fantastically funny, sports comedy about race, brotherhood, money and basketball; so the studio thought it was time to introduce a new generation to the thrills, spills, and laughs of the court by giving us a 2023 remake; a remake steeped with more disappointment than Billy Hoyle’s bank statements.
Rapper Jack Harlow, and Sinqua Walls (Shark Night 3D) headline as Jeremy and Kamal respectively; two down on their luck guys who love basketball but never got a chance to fulfil their dreams of playing in the big leagues. They’re both family men, both could use a little extra cash (though neither seems to be on especially hard times), and are both pining to be back on the court in a meaningful way. Oh, but one’s black and one’s white so cue the drama; or don’t because these two interchangeable, Gen Z, douchebags are not only cookie-cutter copies of one another, but basically start off as besties.
Anyone expecting a buddy-comedy filled with racial commentary, tension, and a bit of drama, or any comedy for that matter, will be sorely disappointed. Sure, the writers tried desperately to ham-fist a few one-liners in there highlighting the ‘differences’ between these two and their cultures, but they’re both cut from the same cloth; kamal was on his way to be a star, Jeremy was playing at a decent level before he got injured, and now they’re in exactly the same place as one another, doing the same thing, with the same kinds of people around them. Jeremy never feels out of place in Kamal’s world, and therein lies the problem; it’s no longer a film about differences, and without the differences there are no laughs, no tension, and simply nothing interesting; White Men Can’t Jump (2023) is simply a film about two men who meet, become friends, and decide to enter a basketball tournament together.
Sure, they both have their dreams, their little redemption arcs, and their heart-to-heart moments, but the constant talk of therapy, bettering oneself, and fucking veganism (difficult to tell if that’s a comment on modern day white-culture, or a dig at original star Woody Harrelson, but either way it makes Jeremy an unlikable cur), is just too… privileged.
We’re supposed to believe this pair of well-meaning but unlucky fellows come from the streets; they’re supposed to be hustlers, barely making it from paycheque-to-paycheque, ducking, diving, and doing what they can to get by. Yet Kamal has a steady job, a decent home life, and his wife is working too. Jeremy’s other half has a decent job, and he lives in a fairly spacious apartment (even telling us the rent is dirt cheap). For Christ’s sake, Jeremy has an iMac, and Kamal’s Mrs is using a MacBook; they’re about as desperate as a mid-level politician wondering if their third Tesla is a good investment.
This lack of desperation, again, negates any drama or sense of urgency. There’s no real need to play in this tournament; sure Kamal’s wife wants to buy her own salon, and Jeremy wants to prove to his girlfriend he can make money, but why play? They do it simply because they want to. They don’t need to. And because there’s no inherent need or desperation, the only reason for these guys to come together is because they are besties. All drama, tension, bickering, is gone; it wouldn’t serve this story; and it makes for lifeless viewing.
Neither Kamal nor Jeremy even know how the other plays; they jump to a shootout competition upon their first meeting, then instantly decide to becomes ‘hustlers’ together. Why? How? Both are doing their own thing and both are surrounded by ballers each and every day. It’d make sense if there was something that set even one of them apart from the crowd; in the original, Sidney was a great player and, as basketball was a black thing, Billy was constantly underestimated, so they used both to their advantage; here they simply team-up because they can. It doesn’t even seem like they’re the best players each other knows.
Which means the basketball scenes suck too. Back in ’92 it was essential the two stars could play ball; Woody was a lifelong basketball player, and Wesley Snipes’ dance and martial arts background helped him pick up the sport, so both were playing at easily a college basketball level during production. In 2023, it doesn’t look like it matters to the filmmakers one bit. The skill level isn’t highlighted at all, none of the plays are especially gripping or visually striking to a layman, and the games aren’t given any weight whatsoever. They even play indoor ball for God’s sake. We don’t keep score, we don’t get to know the opponents, we flit from game to game too quickly to get invested, and as it doesn’t seem like either of our main characters need the money, we don’t really care about the outcome.
Harlow and Walls aren’t strong enough to carry a film. Certainly not strong enough to replace the perfect pairing of Woody and Wesley. They lack chemistry. Neither show real emotion or drive (barring Walls in one singular scene), and watching the two of them fumble their way through this lifeless remake is not only painful, but more akin to watching a Disney Channel B-movie. In fact the entire White Men Can’t Jump remake feels more like a teen-movie, a High School Musical type buddy outing, or any forgettable family-friendly sports film, rather than the raw, street-level social commentary and adult comedy the classic White Men Can’t Jump delivered. This poor, nostalgia-failing remake is dumbed down, empty, lifeless, laugh-less, and lacking any soul whatsoever.
It lacks the social awareness of the original; which had extremely relevant timing (with its U.S. release roughly a month before the Rodney King riots), and a keen knowledge of the street culture, dress sense, and mentality of L.A.’s street-court scene. The dress sense, the people, the words, and the desperation, were all conveyed with seemingly effortless ease, and raw neutrality in the ‘90s; which meant you knew those characters; you could’ve actually gone down to the Venice beach courts and taken Sidney Deane to the hole. This heightened, Hollywood-polished, remake, with its undeniably pretty, yet completely out of place, Instagram-visuals, is a diluted, gentrified, near PG version of a classic (even the trash talk, a true highlight of the original, would feel lame on an elementary school playground), and rather than standing out like Billy, Sidney, and the entire original movie did, it feels utterly generic.
Yet, despite dumbing everything down to toddler levels of understanding (when Kamal and Jeremy step onto the court together, we’re literally forced to sit through some average b-ball shenanigans while a rendition of “Why Can’t We Be Friends” plays over the top – the film even finishes with “Just The Two of Us” in case it’s unclear; black and white can be friends), this clueless remake also adopts the mantra ‘bigger is better’ when it clearly isn’t the case. A prime example comes from a scene where in the original, an angry parolee, annoyed at being hustled, goes to his glove-compartment to get a gun and threatens to shoot everyone on the court. In the new, bigger, version, a player we’re not even introduced to loses a game, and goes to fetch a flamethrower. A fucking flamethrower. It’s needlessly OTT. it’s completely unbelievable (unlike the very real, and surprisingly funny, threat of a street player carrying a pistol) , and doesn’t bring any laughs, or even shock value; other than making you realise how stupid the entire movie is, how the filmmakers utterly failed with the world building, and how terrible the writing is throughout.
Back in ’92, audiences were treated to a hilarious, quick-fire, perfectly written, excellently directed, sports comedy, with a sprinkling of drama, when White Men Can’t Jump hit the big screen. In 2023, Fox fumbled their shot at a remake, throwing up brick after brick and failing at every turn. White Men Can’t Jump (2023) is a vapid, lifeless, loveless, nostalgia cash-in that will only upset fans of the original, and fail to captivate new audiences. The only good thing to say about the film, other than the fact it reuses the Watts court from the first film, is the always welcome Lance Reddick (John Wick) stars as Kamal’s father.
We’ve already seen, everything this film wishes it was, and more. So, do yourself a favour, avoid a badly-written, badly directed, poorly acted, remake which nobody asked for or needed. Avoid a film with so little love for its predecessor the closing credits say “Based on the 1991 motion picture”, despite the fact the Ron Shelton classic was released in 1992. Avoid a film which tries and fails miserably to be a racism message movie, and somehow ends up being far more sexist than a film released 31 years ago (reducing the roles of Jamal’s wife and Jeremy’s girlfriend to little more than two-dimensional set-dressing). Avoid a film which took a classic, stripped away every single aspect which made it beloved for so long, and presented us with an oddly shiny shell, devoid of any substance. Avoid White Men Can’t Jump at all costs.
Instead, watch the original White Men Can’t Jump. A true classic. A superbly written, excellently acted, hugely funny film with heart, raw direction, a true sense of the world it was portraying, and a fantastic soundtrack. A film, which didn’t need a remake, and certainly didn’t deserve this travesty.
