Uncle Drew Review

When I first saw the advertising for this movie, I honestly thought it was a joke. I can't remember if it was a movie poster or a teaser trailer, but I looked at it and thought it was a fan-made joke. Because there's no way they'd actually turn that Kyrie Irving Pepsi campaign into a feature-length movie, right? I mean, it was a clever idea for a series of commercials. Kyrie Irving dresses up as an old man and goes out on the street ball court, shocking everyone around him that an old man is kicking their trash. That's all there is to it. No need to extend it to 100 minutes. But yet here we are. This isn't joke. Pepsi teamed up with an actual film production company in Temple Hill Productions, got Summit Entertainment, a subsidiary of Lionsgate, to distribute, and here we are. And in case you forgot this was a thing by Pepsi, we start by "Pepsi Productions presents..." And then just to make sure you remember that this is a Pepsi thing, Pepsi products are all over in this movie. The sheer volume of Pepsi product placement is ridiculous. I felt like I was watching a 100-minute long commercial for Pepsi that was made purely to sell Pepsi rather than to entertain audiences. Thus it's been a while since I've seen such an unashamed money grab, but it is what it is, so let's talk about it.

First and foremost, if you can look beyond the Pepsi advertising, this is a movie made for fans of the NBA. If you don't know who Kyrie Irving is or Reggie Miller, Chris Webber and Nate Robinson, you're going to see the wrong movie. Shaq is in here, too, but everyone knows Shaq, so that's beside the point. Also, if you don't watch Scott Van Pelt on SportsCenter every night and you don't know what an ESPN 30 for 30 is, you're also going to be a bit miffed by this movie. For that I give this movie full credit for knowing who their target audience is and pandering specifically to them. It's what made me love "Space Jam" so much growing up. All the basketball references and basketball ties shoved into one movie was glorious. That and the whole Looney Toons thing. But mostly the basketball. I loved 90's basketball and thus "Space Jam" was my movie because it combined everything I love about the 90's into one movie. I see critics today hating on "Space Jam" today. In fact, it's become a very trendy movie to tear to pieces among YouTube critics. But I say screw them all. I still love "Space Jam." And, well, I have to admit that "Uncle Drew" could be this generation's "Space Jam" with how well they pander to today's modern basketball audience.

But yet I'm going to be that grumpy old man for most of this review because I thought this was really stupid. And we start right with the plot. If you're trying to rack your brain in thinking about how to turn a 5-minute commercial into a 100-minute movie, yeah that's the problem I imagine the script writers had, too. Yes, we've seen time and again where creative writers take a simple idea that you wouldn't think would translate into a movie and somehow make it work. "The LEGO Movie" is a great example of that. A movie based on LEGOs? How do you make that work? Oh. That's how. So it's possible that with a good team of writers, a great basketball movie could've been made from these Uncle Drew commercials. But after seeing the movie, I'm envisioning the writing room for this movie and all I see is conflict and confusion as the team of writers are trying their best to come up with something clever, but just come up blank. Because this is one of the most poorly written sports comedies I've seen, with just about every basketball movie cliche in the book. It's so poorly written that I almost want to warn you of spoilers before I introduce the plot of the movie because the second the movie is set up, you can predict exactly where it's going and you won't be wrong.

If you want to turn away, then feel free to. But I'm going to do said introduction of the plot anyways. The movie starts by shoving a whole ton of exposition in your face by means of a fictional 30 for 30 about Uncle Drew and his glory days in the Rucker Classic, an actual street basketball tournament played at Rucker Park in New York City. But anyways, in this fictional setting, Uncle Drew and his team completely disappeared before the final game, hence the movie sets up the mystery of Uncle Drew. But despite the movie being called "Uncle Drew," the central character in the movie is not Uncle Drew. It's a man named Dax, played by comedian Lil Rel Howery, best known for "Get Out." Dax's rival in this movie is Mookie, played by Nick Kroll. Well, Dax grew up watching Michael Jordan and being inspired by him to play basketball, like most kids from the 80's and 90's. But when Dax got into playing, he ended up quitting because Mookie blocked his shot in one tournament game and left him scarred. So fast forward to the present day, Dax works in a shoe store and coaches a team led by Aaron Gordon, who plays Casper in this movie. But Mookie walks in, steals his team, steals his girlfriend, and leaves him with nothing. So now Dax goes out searching for Uncle Drew.

Despite this being a basketball movie, a good portion of the movie is actually a road trip. Because of course Dax accidentally stumbles on Uncle Drew, watches him do his Uncle Drew things from the Pepsi commercials, then convinces Uncle Drew to play for him in this Rucker Classic so that he can beat Mookie and win the prize money in order to get his life back. And of course Uncle Drew agrees, but it has to be Uncle Drew's team with Uncle Drew's players. So one by one, we go on this road trip recruiting Chris Webber, Reggie Miller, Nate Robinson and Shaq, all of whom are dressed up like old men like Uncle Drew. I didn't keep track of how long this road trip lasted, but this almost become more of a road trip movie than a basketball movie with a whole bunch of different jokes and gags along the way, all involving this group of five current and former NBA players dressed up like old men doing old people jokes. The movie tries to play out some drama with the recruiting process, but it ends up being really easy to get everyone to join, despite Reggie Miller being blind and Nate Robinson being in a wheelchair, while Chris Webber and Shaq haven't played basketball in years. Chris Webber is a preacher with a crazy wife, played by Lisa Leslie, and Shaq is a karate teacher.

Every step along the way, the plot is clunky. The humor sometimes works, but I wasn't laughing as much as I wanted to. Whenever the movie tries to drama, it blows up in the movie's face by being cringe-worthy. However, despite all of this, what does make the movie a bit endearing as how fun our cast of basketball players are having. They're not that great at acting, but Kyrie Irving, Chris Webber, Reggie Miller, Nate Robinson, Shaq and Lisa Leslie are having the time of their lives playing these old characters. I especially loved every moment with Chris Webber and Lisa Leslie. Eventually we do get to the tournament at the end and it's also a lot of fun watching this team play, especially our former players. I didn't care much for Kyrie Irving himself playing, but seeing Reggie Miller, Chris Webber and Shaq on the court again was a lot of fun. Eventually Lisa Leslie steps in and she's fun to watch, too. The problem here is this plays into every basketball cliche. You know what's going to happen during the tournament. You know who they're going to face in the finale. And given the movie's setup, you know exactly how the final seconds of the game are going to play out, thus there's no actual moments of surprise or tension.

I actually think my biggest problem with the movie, outside the horribly written script, was the huge focus on this Dax vs. Mookie conflict. Lil Rel Howery and Nick Kroll did great with what they were given, but I didn't like how their characters were written and I had no investment in their story arc. I thought Tiffany Haddish, the original girlfriend who dumps Dax the second his life falls apart, was extremely annoying and way too over-the-top. Thus the only real actor in the movie I cared for was Dax's new girlfriend Maya, played by Erica Ash. What saves the movie is all the basketball players having a lot of fun with their roles. They were fun to watch when they got to play again and they did have fun being these old characters and making old man jokes the whole time. They weren't the best actors, but they didn't need to be. They had fun and I had fun watching them. There's also a lot of basketball references and jokes that made me laugh. All of that humor will go right over the heads of non-NBA fans, but being a fan of the NBA myself caused me to chuckle quite a bit at said references. I started this review by comparing this to "Space Jam," but I actually think a better comparison is the Adam Sandler remake of "The Longest Yard." On that note, I'm going to give "Uncle Drew" a 6/10.