July 25, 2018 2 min to read

Uncle Drew

I'm sure it was fun to make, I just wish it was more fun to watch.

by Zach Saul

Uncle Drew just barely meets the threshold of what should be allowed to be classified as a movie. Irving deserves credit for acting in his first movie, and one he likely made during the NBA season - I just wish the infrastructure around him was stronger. In long stretches it feels a lot more like a blooper reel, or a pepsi ad than a sports movie - but that’s not to say parts of it weren’t fun. However I think the fun was mostly had by Shaq, Kyrie, and the gang and not necessarily by the audience. It it fun to see shaq dressed up like a 75 year old karate master? Sure. How about Reggie Miller pretending to be blind? You bet. But after the first sixty seconds passes and you realize you’re stuck watching these characters repeat stale catch phrases for two hours it becomes considerably less fun. Therein lies the problem. Uncle Drew was an incredible commercial, and it was built on a concept only meant to entertain us for two minutes. His swag came to some extent from the unknown, and perhaps his mystique. The curtain has been lifted in Uncle Drew, and behind it there’s a lot of dorky dad jokes, and “young bloods” (a phrase Irving’s character beats into the ground). I think baring something very unexpected we won’t be seeing more from Uncle Drew, in commercials or the silver screen.

Haddish, and Kroll being the seasoned comedians on the cast, did their part to liven things up, but the writing in this movie was just too lazy. Irving, Weber, and Miller just weren’t given enough to do, and it’s unreasonable to expect non-actors to carry a criminally underwritten movie. Of the NBA greats, Shaq was the best on screen perhaps because of his experience on Kazam, and Steel. Irving and Weber’s old man voices were fading in and out noticeably, and Boots (Nate Robinson) isn’t even given a speaking part.

I thought the sports scenes also lacked a lot of luster. It’s a tough task because those sequences are inherently predictable, but too much of the action just didn’t look good. It’s difficult for me to believe NBA players of this caliber can’t concoct plays, and moves to show in the movie that were a little more creative then layups and crossovers. Part of what made Uncle Drew’s commercials so much fun is that they were unexpected, and set in what felt like the gritty playground. Even though the movie is set there, I never felt for one millisecond like the Harlem shown in this version was a place anyone had ever played pickup basketball.

The Good: You get to watch 5 NBA legends dressed up as 80-year old men dunking over Aaron Gordon and Nick Kroll, and that’s something.

The Bad: The Uncle Drew movie was a pretty shameless cash grab, and one I blame Pepsi for, not the players. Maybe they were in a rush filming this because of Kyrie’s schedule, but it definitely shows. This movie also needed the energy of a Chris Hart or a Dave Chapelle, and Lil Rex Howery (Dax) simply wasn’t able to carry the load as the movie’s “protagonist”.