'White Men Can't Jump' review: Stick with the original

WHAT IT'S ABOUT The 1992 sports movie classic "White Men Can't Jump" gets remade for Hulu with Sinqua Walls ("American Soul") and the rapper Jack Harlow taking on the roles originated by Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson.

Several years after Kamal Allen (Walls), a highly touted NBA prospect, saw his professional dream come to an abrupt end, his basketball world has been reduced to dominating in pickup games. 

One day at the gym, he encounters Jeremy (Jack Harlow), who comes complete with an NPR tote bag, wears socks and sandals, touts meditation and hippie health drinks and, lo and behold, packs some major basketball skills himself.

The potential to make some serious cash by hustling on Southern California courts brings this odd couple together.

The movie is directed by Calmatic, whose credits include the "Old Town Road" music video, and coscripted by Kenya Barris ("black-ish") and Doug Hall.

MY SAY The original "White Men Can't Jump" works as well as it does for three reasons: the chemistry between Snipes and Harrelson; the detailed trash talk scripted by the writer-director Ron Shelton, the sports movie maven; and the absorbing SoCal street ball atmosphere.

Predictably, the new movie offers none of that. 

It would be a lot to ask for Walls and Harlow, the latter of whom makes his acting debut here, to replicate what Snipes and Harrelson achieved. The Snipes-Harrelson duo was special; sometimes, casting just achieves a certain kind of magic.

But even with lowered expectations, it's still disappointing. Walls suffers through an underwritten character with a clichéd backstory. Barris and Hall give Harlow tons of elaborate dialogue, expecting him to provide the bulk of the comic relief, and at times it seems as if he can barely get the lines out.

Shelton ("Bull Durham") has a story credit on this remake, but his particular screenwriting touch cannot be easily duplicated.

Plus, the real-life growth of organized street ball tournaments, with major sponsors, means that the picture gets packed with product placement, as well as generic storytelling beats. It's simply a less interesting world to explore these days.

The 2023 "White Men Can't Jump" is a tamer, more predictable, less funny version, without the idiosyncratic personality that set its predecessor apart.

Nonetheless, if it's possible to forget all of that, to toss aside memories of the older movie that could simply be rediscovered with a click of a streaming service's button, there's still some value here.

Calmatic has a strong visual eye; the movie looks great, with its court settings framed against the Los Angeles streets or sweeping ocean vistas. There's a musical rhythm to the basketball scenes, as well as a pretty stellar collection of needle drops, movie slang for preexisting songs hitting the soundtrack.

When it comes to generic cinematic escapism, one could do worse. But as the film critic Roger Ebert once observed, in quoting a reader, the age-old Hollywood question looms large over this "White Men Can't Jump": Why do they only remake the good movies?

BOTTOM LINE Stick with the original.