'Uncle Drew' Is No Slam Dunk, but It Still Scores

Years ago, Kyrie Irving performed a couple of promotional stunts for Pepsi Max in which he put on prosthetics and assumed the persona “Uncle Drew”, an old timer who showed up during pick-up games in various community basketball parks and dominated whenever he was asked to play.  Apparently, there are filmmakers that thought the the character deserves to have his own movie.  Thus, we now have Uncle Drew.

The plot focuses on Dax (LilRel Howery), a coach who invests his entire life savings on entering a team into the annual Rucker Classic streetball tournament.  However, his long-time rival Mookie (Nick Kroll) steals his players away from him, including star player Casper Jones (Orlando Magic’s Aaron Gordon).  Bankrupt and with no team, Dax desperately turns to streetball legend Uncle Drew (Kyrie Irving), who can still play exceptionally well despite his old age.  Uncle Drew agrees to help Dax, but under one condition: the team is going to be made up of his old teammates (retired NBA players Shaquille O’Neal, Reggie Miller, Chris Webber, and Nate Robinson).

Right from the start, Uncle Drew is undeniably dumb and by-the-numbers.  But it’s not awful either.  It’s actually fun, and surprisingly pensive at times.  NBA fans will especially find it a treat.

In fact, Shaquille O’Neal has been in a couple of movies already, but this one is easily the best one he’s ever been in (that either tells how good this movie is or how bad Shaq’s films have been).

At first, I thought it would have been much better if it was Irving’s current peers in the NBA (like Kevin Love, who had already been part of one Uncle Drew Pepsi Max ad years ago) joining him in this movie instead of Shaq and the rest.  But that notion was soon discarded when they proved to be entertaining and amiable to watch – just like how they are when they clown around on TV in their present jobs as basketball analysts/commentators.  They generated a couple of hilarious spots – most notably, on top of my head, are when Preacher (Chris Webber’s character) was baptizing a baby, and when Lights (Reggie Miller’s character) was shooting hoops in the arcade.  In addition, for a couple of non-actors, their performances here were impressively solid.

Overall, Uncle Drew is more than a serviceable watch despite its flaws.  It may not be thunderous slam dunk, but it nonetheless scores.