White Men Can’t Jump is a film that couldn’t have appeared at any other time in history than 1992. Those attached to the 2023 remake may disagree – but Hollywood is now dredging the 1990s intellectual property pool, which is why adults are arguing online about a Little Mermaid remake, and why this basketball film has been dusted off and rebooted in an attempt to recapture some of the lightning-in-a-bottle quality of the original.
But the original wasn’t really about race, just as it wasn’t really about basketball. White Men Can’t Jump is about misconceptions and desperation. Though there is also a fair bit of basketball.
Ron Shelton’s film is set in a cartoon version of Venice Beach’s outdoor basketball courts, soundtracked by plastic funk and populated by brightly dressed hustlers and harmonising buskers who offer sage advice and sweet melodies. It was released in cinemas a month before the LA riots but the only threat of violence in this film comes during one of its funniest scenes, where a straight razor is brandished in a comedically foiled corner-store robbery.
Those looking for grit or realism should search elsewhere. This is a world where basketball games, in which rent money is on the line, will suddenly grind to a halt in service of five straight minutes of “yo mama” jokes; where elaborate hustles are planned and carried out in the name of $60; where a five-foot-seven Wesley Snipes is an unstoppable force on the meanest courts in America and who, as the film’s backstory wants you to believe, once dunked on Michael Jordan.
The movie hangs on three mighty performances. Woody Harrelson, fresh from his role as the “ah shucks” bumpkin bartender on Cheers, commands the film as the streetwise Billy Hoyle, a charismatic hustler who plays up his corn-feed goofiness to trick money from seasoned street ballers who take his appearance as read.
He takes Snipes’ character, fellow hustler and self-proclaimed king of the court Sidney Deane, for $62 in the opening scene. Impressed by the brazen simplicity of Billy’s hustle, Sidney proposes they team up to take their grift to the next level. A goofy white guy and a short dude – who can’t beat them?
Snipes is at his charming best, delivering at least a dozen memorable one-liners and never stepping over either side of the villain-hero line. You like him but you never trust him.Harrelson’s acting dexterity is known now but his nuanced performance here was a revelation in 1992. Plus, he can convincingly play a mean game of basketball, too.
Then there is Rosie Perez as Billy’s partner, Gloria, who is seemingly in another film entirely: a darker domestic tale about how Billy’s impulsiveness and gambling addiction overpowers their love. Her booksmarts go begging in a system where her only hope of using her brains for profit is by winning big on the gameshow Jeopardy! The rare scenes in which the three leads interact, with their uneasy chemistry, are the film’s finest moments.
White Men Can’t Jump is one of the most disjointed films you’re likely to see: it’s closer to a series of Saturday Night Live sketches that some script doctor stitched together at the eleventh hour. There is a lot of plot propulsion the more discerning viewer will have to overlook – a hustler who moonlights as a security guard on the Jeopardy! lot is somehow able to wrangle Gloria a slot on the show if Billy hits a shot from half-court, while a scene where Billy is forced to prove that white men can, indeed, jump, seems shoehorned in to serve the title.
There is also a side plot that involves Billy and Gloria running from low-key mobsters but the cartoonish tone of the rest of the film stops this from having any real sense of danger – indeed, when the debt is cleared, it’s akin to Billy paying a late video rental fee. But to pick out the plot holes in a film like this is like dismissing the Simpsons because they have four fingers.
Surprisingly, the film ends with a gut-punch; an on-court victory rendered hollow by the collateral damage it does. And then, just as in a Simpsons episode, everything snaps back into place, and you imagine Billy and Sidney heading back out to the courts to play out their clever grift on an infinite loop.
