Ron Shelton comedy from 1992 White men can’t jump is a stone cold classic. It has three movie stars – Wesley Snipes, Rosie Perez and Woody Harrelson – at the top of their game. It’s a funny movie, dedicating long stretches to effortless encounter scenes on the Venice Beach basketball courts, where the characters talk endlessly while also playing some great hoops. And it’s a layered character drama, where racial tension is one of several layers in a story of con artists and trust.
The 2023 remake of White men can’t jump, directed by Calmatic, is a much simpler comeback story. Kamal Allen (Sinqua Walls) was a former basketball prodigy whose college ball prospects were crushed when he got into a brawl and ended up in jail. Ten years later, Kamal balances his time between his job as a delivery boy, his girlfriend Imani (Teyana Taylor) and their child, and a ball at his high school gym.
Here he meets Jeremy (noted white rapper Jack Harlow), a man with no job but a dozen side hustles, a fixation on juice cleanses, and a personal style best described as Instagram Hippie.
Photo: Parrish Lewis/20th Century Studios
Jeremy likes basketball. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the NBA and college ball, and despite surgeries to repair two torn ACLs that still leave him in pain, he still believes there’s a future for him somewhere in the game. (Hence the juice cleanse.) Jeremy is also really damn annoying, and his inability to ever carry himself like a serious person, combined with his killer shot, makes him an unlikely ringer on the field. It doesn’t take long for Kamal to team up with him to play cash pick up games.
From a script by Kenya Barris and Doug Hall, the 2023 White men can’t jump is a remake in name only, a gut renovation where someone decided the “refurbishment” part wasn’t necessary. The result is a toothless film, a generic story where an aspiring greatness derailed by anger learns something from his painful white teammate, who reciprocates by learning to get serious about a few things in life.
Confusing style with substance, the 2023 White men can’t jump focuses entirely on basketball and makes the characters disappear into next-to-nothing. There’s no hustle and bustle of the characters: they just place bets and play pick-up against people they think they can beat. The risks associated with ripping people off — something the original movie used to give the story a sense of danger and stake — don’t exist in the new movie.
Photo: Parrish Lewis/20th Century Studios
To be honest, Kamal and Jeremy can’t put the spotlight on Sidney and Billy from the 1992 original. They come across as Jack Harlow’s blue-eyed look: pretty on the field, but empty between the ears. Their romantic subplots are sitcom-dad fare in which they briefly place basketball above the people they care about, a far cry from the deft way the source material used its women as a foil for men’s attempts to get ahead and cross the line. hitting with nothing but charisma and a basketball.
The strangest decision in White men can’t jump lies in Jeremy’s torn ACLs. It’s a character trait that exists mainly to make the film’s title literal: Jeremy, the white man of the same name, just can’t jump. Except he can, when the movie calls for it. Like many ideas put forward in the film’s script, the subsequent plot puts little faith in it. Jokes about how it’s no longer remarkable that a white boy can ball abound, as if that were the only point of the original movie (which, by the way, premiered the year that Larry Bird, already crowned one of the greatest of basketball, retired).
It’s almost impossible to discern a sincere appreciation for the original White men can’t jump in the new one. Scenes are reinterpreted and references are made, but the remake isn’t built to do what the original did – which is digging into a particular white man and his relationship with a very specific character from a different racial background. Every conversation from the original movie is laced with meaning: you can study them the way a good ballplayer studies an opponent’s play. The new film trades all that in for Jack Harlow muttering pathetically that there are some jokes he can’t make because he’s white, and he expects audiences to laugh at this self-consciousness like they haven’t heard it before.
The original White men can’t jump is worth seeing 31 years later, and that specificity is why. It lingers in conversations and lets entire basketball games play. Watching Wesley Snipes’ portrayal of Sidney shift from scene to scene – he’s a different man in front of Billy, in front of his wife, Rhonda (Tyra Ferrell), and away from them both – a complete portrait of a complicated person emerges sweating on the track.
The same goes for Billy, who plays Harrelson as someone who isn’t racially enlightened per se, but is aware of the dynamics at play in spaces that aren’t his own. For him, basketball is a direct expression of a deeper pride that holds him back when his girlfriend, Gloria (Rosie Perez), tries to communicate openly with him.
The new White men can’t jump will probably have a hard time getting stuck in someone’s head the day after they watch it. Every character interaction is simple, every motivation and weakness is spoken out loud. Every joke is delivered for the camera, not the characters. The result is a film that leaves the viewer with virtually nothing to think about. Maybe someone will try again in another 31 years.
The new White men can’t jump now streaming on Hulu. The OG 1992 version is on Hulu and can be rented or purchased on Amazon, Vuduand other digital platforms, and is streamed free with ads on the Roku channel.