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SUV sunroof. And he dribbles like the basketball is lava. Of course,
there’s nothing wrong with any of this. If you are a person who runs
like an undead monster, or shoots a basketball like your elbows are
bacon bits, or dribbles a basketball like it has measles, good for you!
I’m glad you’re active at least! But if you are a person who is supposed
to portray someone who is good enough at basketball that you could
conceivably hustle actual ball players, you have to be ... good enough
at basketball that you could conceivably hustle actual ball players.
Jack Harlow is not.
“But wait!” I imagine the seven of you who care about this asking.
“Woody Harrelson wasn’t exactly Steph Curry either. What’s the
difference between him and Harlow?” Well, Woody wasn’t bad. He
had a funky shot, but handled and moved with an ease and fluidity
that only exists if you’ve actually played. He belonged out there. Jack
Harlow belongs on the bleachers. J ack Harlow belongs at the
bleacher factory. I’m sure he’s a fine young man, though. (He does
have quite the admirable curl pattern too.)
This segues to a long-standing beef I’ve had with Hollywood.
Basketball is not a sport like football or baseball where if an actor is
physically fit and can run, jump and catch, they can believably
portray a linebacker or a center fielder or something. To be even
passably decent at basketball requires hundreds of hours of playing
it, and no directing or fancy editing can obscure that. Which is why
most basketball scenes on screen, even the ones depicting the NBA,
look like someone just found some really tall third-graders with
SAG-AFTRA cards.
Maybe they’ll surprise me. Maybe Jack Harlow will get much,
much, much better between now and filming. Maybe Kenya Barris
— who co-wrote the script (and bought the rights to my book too) —
has penned the first basketball movie with no actual basketball
played in it, which I would be into! Just not the current version of
Jack Harlow on the basketball court. We already had to suffer
through Wesley Snipes in the original, who hooped like he learned
how to hoop by listening to Kurtis Blow.
I thought reboots are supposed to bring people joy. This reboot
would bring me no joy.I’
m not as bothered by the concept of the rebooted movie as I
used to be. I used to hate them like I hate wet eggs and dry shin
skin. Like I hated Eboni Thomas for a week in fifth grade after
she said I smell like leaves. And just so you know that this antipathy
ain’t just movie snobbery, I saw “Fast Five” — and “Fast & Furious 6”
and “Furious 7” and “The Fate of the Furious” (and the limited
release “Furious Is a Synonym for Mad”) — in the theater. Day 1.
Midnight viewing. And bought a Dodge Charger two months later.
Anyway, the reboots keep happening. Which means there’s
obviously an audience for this spate of uncanny nostalgic valley. So,
I’ve decided to stop hating a harmless thing that seems to bring
people joy.
I’m not even mad at the recent decision to reboot “White Men
Can’t Jump.” I thought the original was good. The ending was weird,
but the premise was great, and the casting was almost perfect. And if
Hollywood has space for 17,000 dives into Boston’s underworld why
not revisit the bountiful collision of street ball, hustling and racial
stereotype?
It’s possible I’m into it just because hustling on hoop courts is a
subject I have an intimate knowledge of. One of my oldheads at
Pittsburgh’s Pennley Park used to bet his boys that they couldn’t beat
me in a three-point contest. The ones who didn’t know me would
take one look at this snotty-nosed, bucktoothed, egg-headed 11-year-
old and think easy money. Splitting the cash me and my oldhead
would eventually win was almost as fun as watching their faces drop
when I’d swish my first six.
I’ll also concede the possibility that Jack Harlow, who has been
reportedly cast as one of the leads, has some untapped acting chops. I
know that he is a popular rapper. I do not know if his music is good,
and I’ve made peace with that decision. But who knows? Maybe he’s
the next Brando. That doesn’t matter, though. What does matter —
and why I’m diametrically opposed to this particular reboot — is that
Jack Harlow is a terrible basketball player.
I watched him play in the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game in
February. He runs like if Frankenstein had irritable bowel
syndrome. He shoots like he’s shot-putting a bag of jeans into an
The Jack
Harlow-led
‘White Men
Can’t Jump’
can’t happen
ILLUSTRATION: MONIQUE WRAY