“Party at LeBron’s” is a dynamite premise for a movie, especially if the King in question is the cheapskate egotist who stole the 2015 romcom Trainwreck as effortlessly as he would a lazy crosscourt pass. But it’s one thing for Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer to caricature the NBA great, quite another for James to take himself down a few pegs and bring one of the more beloved franchises in Black film cinema history with him.
House Party – like the forthcoming White Men Can’t Jump remake, also directed by Charles Kidd II (AKA Calmatic) – makes no titular attempt to distinguish itself from the 1990 classic. This latest edition, which premieres this weekend, doesn’t so much build on the story of the previous three films, or the two straight-to-DVD postscripts, as retread the idea of two best buds throwing a big do that promises to forever change their lives. In the original, Kid and Play (Christopher Reid and Christopher Martin) were a hungry pair of preppy rappers who were legitimately talented and clawing for a breakthrough. In the new edition Damon (Tosin Cole) is a clout-chasing social media influencer, and Kevin (Jacob Latimore) a reluctant bedroom beat maker with a baby daughter named Destiny (groan) who needs money for private school.
Neither is especially well-suited for the careers to which they aspire, or to their day jobs as cleaners, or to their side hustle as local party promoters. Just as they’re pink-slipped for slacking on the clock, the bros learn the vacated Los Angeles manor they’ve drawn for their final assignment is home to basketball’s self-proclaimed GOAT – who, as luck would have it, is away on a two-week meditation sabbatical in Asia. The juicy opportunity promises to solve the boys’ financial problems and deliver one last good time before heavier adult responsibilities take them separate ways. And the conceit just might’ve worked if the film weren’t bogged down with so many pointless cameos.
Everybody who’s anybody makes an appearance in this movie as themselves – from Snoop Dogg to the inaugural Black Power Ranger (Walter Emanuel Jones). For screenwriters Jamal Olori and Atlanta’s Stephen Glover, Y2K is still a vibe. House Party’s soundtrack, compiled by Def Jam, is a fin de siècle paean that probably wouldn’t be in rotation with these Gen Z revelers. The film climaxes with the rapper Juvenile performing his strip club anthem Back That Azz Up, a song that dropped in 1998. The major love interest is the R&B siren Mya. And even though she is still very much a Sade Adu-grade knockout at 43, the Ghetto Supastar songbird hardly seems like the woman Damon, ostensibly born after Mya’s 1998 studio album debut, would pine for.
The inaugural House Party effectively cut the ribbon on the hip-hop-to-Hollywood pipeline. It mainstreamed preppy rap before Kanye, spread fun new dance crazes before TikTok, turbocharged the revving careers of actors Tisha Campbell and AJ Johnson, comedians Martin Lawrence and Robin Harris, and writer-director Reginald Hudlin – whose cultural touchstone began life as an award-winning Harvard student film. The walk-ons resonate because the people making them weren’t especially big back then.
In the new film Kid and Play barely get any screen time to sneeze, much less establish meaningful links to their groundbreaking work. In a film heavy on bit parts you’d expect it would be James, as ever, who shoulders this feature; his film company produced it, after all. But when even he (or, rather, his hologram) name-checks Trainwreck early on, you sort of know where this one is headed. Not even funnyman DC Young Fly, presumably brought on to this project to leverage his considerable following from MTV’s Wild ’N Out and his pseudo-spinoff 85 South Show, gets much to do while channeling Lawrence’s DJ role besides spark up – his stock-in-trade. But in reality it’s Kid Cudi who salvages the picture playing an even more deadpan version of himself. And he carries the second half of the story through a macabre twist that at least makes the 100-minute feature worth finishing.
In an early 2022 Vlad TV interview, Johnson, among the notable omissions from the reboot, had sharp words for James’s hangout film. “I honestly feel like when something is that iconic […] some things are just better left where they are,” she said. “It’s classic for a reason, and I don’t know any classics that get redone well.” This remake is no exception. James’s heart and hangups might be in the right place. But unless you’ve got nothing else going this weekend, his House Party is one to skip.
House Party is in US cinemas now and in the UK to rent on 27 January
