Cast:
Anthony Mackie, Wesley Jonathan, Eva Marcille, Wayne Brady, Little JJ
Director:
Preston A. Whitemore II
Genre:
Action, Sport
The
next movie in our list is all about basketball, a sport I have to
admit I find rather dull. To me, basketball plays out like
this: bounce bounce bounce 2 points, bounce bounce bounce 2 points,
bounce bounce bounce 3 points, (big cheer), bounce bounce bounce 2
points, bounce bounce foul!, bounce bounce bounce 1 point, bounce
bounce bounce and so on and so on.
I
am being naïve and there is probably a lot more bouncing that I
realise.
I’ve
never really given basketball a chance so what better way to try to
whet my appetite than a movie based around the sport. Teen
Wolf did not manage it, nor did Space Jam although to be fair I was
asleep through most of it, (as was the rest of the cinema). Was
Crossover the movie to finally change my view?
The
first thing we learn early on in the movie, is that Crossover is not
about basketball, (or as I first thought, the paranormal), but a more
flamboyant version played in the ‘street’ called ‘streetball’,
(wow, that must have taken a while to name!). Sure there’s
lots of bounce bounce bounce, but skills and being a bit of a show
off are also encouraged. The first to 21 points wins and
the organiser of the matches, a shady ex-sports agent called Vaughn,
(Wayne Brady), pockets a shed load of money from dodgy betting scams
based around the game.
The
movie is essentially 2 stories which co-exist throughout. Firstly
there is the story of Tech, (Anthony Mackie), who is a talented
streetball player desperate to get out of the Detroit slums. He
makes money by hustling players on the street basketball courts and
teams up with another talented streetball player called Up, (Lil’
JJ), (which is an odd name for a kid and I can only think his parents
were massive Sonic the Hedgehog fans and that Up was named after the
cheat you entered: Up C, Down C, Left C, Right C, ABC+Start).
His
story is to exact revenge on rival Jewelz, (Philip Champion), an
arrogant streetball player whose team are currently champions and
undefeated. Tech’s team narrowly loses to them at the
beginning of the movie which leads Jewelz to taunt and belittle
Tech. What better way to get revenge than by betting
Vaughn with his hustled streetball money, that he can thrash Jewelz
team and end their undefeated run, (Clingfilm on the toilet?
Laxatives in his drink? Swapping his vitamin tablets for
Viagra?).
The
other story revolves around Tech’s friend, Noah Cruise, (Wesley
Jonathan), who is a standalone star in Tech’s team and a natural
talent. He wins a scholarship to UCLA, however, instead of
using this on basketball and becoming pro, Cruise wishes to use the
scholarship to study and pursue a career in medicine. His
mind is 50/50 until he accidentally makes short time girlfriend and 1
night stand, Vanessa, (Eva Pigford), pregnant and decides he should
do the right thing, marry her and go for the safe medicine career
option.
Vaughn,
spotting Cruise’s talent and dollar signs, desperately tries to
persuade Cruise to abandon the sensible career path. He
offers to become Cruise’s agent and to use his contacts to get
Cruise into the NBA. When Cruise constantly pushes back,
Vaughn realises he may have to resort to desperate tactics.
Will
Tech’s team pull off the upset and get their revenge over
Jewelz? Can Vaughn change Cruise’s mind? And
will I be able to complete level 208 in Candy Crush Saga, the game
I’m playing whilst this movie bores me to tears?
The
answer to the last question, I’m pleased to say, is yes, (but I had
to use a lollipop hammer).
Crossover
starts off with the promise of fast paced action. Director
Preston A. Whitemore II seems to be influenced by Guy Ritchie and the
opening titles remind me of Ritchie’s direction in Lock Stock or
Snatch and is full of snappy short scenes cut with cool cars and
fancy basketball skills to the soundtrack of thumping hip hop. All
looks and sounds good until the titles end and the pace slows down to
a crawl. Crossover goes from Lock Stock Ritchie to Swept
Away Ritchie in the blink of an eye, (see
blog here).
Apart
from a little montage half way through when Tech and Up are hustling
other streetball players, the movie is very pedestrian. This
is not helped by the continual interruption of Up with Basketball
trivia questions to Tech. I assume this is for the real
Basketball fans and is meant to test their knowledge, but to people
like me who are unfamiliar with the sport, this serves as nothing
more than an unwanted pause in the movie.
Maybe
next time they could make it more exciting by having a jazzy jingle
to accompany the quiz, maybe a glamorous assistant to show Tech what
he could win and the promise of being ripped apart by a hungry honey
badger if he gets the answer wrong.
To
be honest though, it would take more than a vicious small animal to
make any of these characters more interesting. Whitemore
II not only directed and gave us this milk float of a movie, but also
wrote and created the dullest clichéd characters he could imagine.
Up
really is only there to pose basketball teasers to Tech and has no
other role in the movie. Vaughn is such a bad pantomime
baddie, that I half expected Brady to slip on a bright pink fake wig,
a very large spotty dress and ask the audience where is the script,
(it’s behind you!). Tech’s girlfriend is just
background and upstaged by potted plants. Cruise’s
girlfriend is just lifted out of movies which need a stereotypical
black nasty female character and comes complete with neck shaking,
clicking fingers and uh-ha noises.
The
movie centres on Tech, which is really odd considering the main story
is about Cruise and his conflicting feelings about trying to go pro
or study medicine. Tech’s character is not strong enough
to command a movie and watching him collect a few bucks so he can
place a bet on the revenge game against Jewelz is neither interesting
nor gripping.
However,
it is Cruise’s character that without a shadow of a doubt, makes
this movie such a lame duck. He whinges, whines and bores
his way through the movie and he is such a dull character that
actually I don’t care if he chooses basketball or medicine. My
only wish is that if he chooses medicine, he makes sure he overdoses
on an experimental drug he makes in his dorm during the first
trimester to save us from any threat of a sequel, (Oh wait, that
would involve Cruise's character doing something interesting, so
that's unlikely to happen!).
So
did Crossover change my view that basketball is a dull sport? Well
no and mainly because the main character seems to shun away the
thought of being a multi-millionaire NBA superstar in favour of
studying. Is playing professional basketball so dull that
you’d rather stare at clear liquids for days on end to monitor
whether or not they change into a slightly less clearer liquid?
Off
course not, that’s ludicrous and one of the main reasons this
movie falls down is because it is so unbelievable that a kid from a
tough harsh background would shun a one in a million chance to make
good for himself and his family. And even if this was true
and the kid just wanted a more stable career, that’s fine in real
life, but as a movie? Well it’s hardly popcorn
entertainment is it?
I’ll
end with one of Up’s trivia questions: Which 2006 movie,
directed by Preston A. Whitemore II and starring Anthony Mackie, is
so dull, dire and dreadful, that it appeared at #46 in Colin and
Wes’s top 100 bad movies of all time and bored one half of the team
to Candy Crush Saga?
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