![]() ![]() If the last genuinely iconic NBA-branded movie ( Space Jam) was centered around the collaboration of Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny, Uncle Drew is a team-up between Irving (an All-Star point guard for the Boston Celtics) and a troupe of impressive makeup artists. Instead, everything feels very competent but safe. ![]() The jokes could be dirtier, the plot looser, the basketball action more gleefully ludicrous. ![]() But it’s hard to shake the underlying corporate air of all the hijinks ensuing, and the sense that the director, Charles Stone III, and writer, Jay Longino, won’t let their stars indulge in sillier tangents. Crazier still, it largely works-it’s a perfectly watchable time at the movies, at least for anyone missing the NBA over the summer. Here is a project with truly canned origins (a series of Pepsi Max commercials that debuted in 2012), starring an ensemble of mostly athletes, with a one-joke premise (an old man is good at basketball!) stretched into a 103-minute feature film. So NBA fans now get to exult in the draft, in the drama of offseason trades and free agency, and, starting this year with the release of Uncle Drew, in the revival of the novelty basketball movie. But ours is an age of media saturation, of total brand dominance in every sphere, of 24/7 coverage. In decades past, when the NBA offseason arrived in June, it meant no more basketball for a while, a break from (in this reviewer’s humble opinion) the world’s greatest professional sport until the fall, when the new season tipped off again. ![]()
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