Basketball Movie Review
White Men Can't Jump (2023)
Jack Harlow and Sinqua Walls inherit one of basketball cinema's most dangerous assignments: remaking a streetball classic whose chemistry and pickup rhythm were the whole point.
Not close to the 1992 original, but worth cataloguing as a modern remix of LA streetball culture — and as evidence of how hard that first movie was to duplicate.
Movie details
2023 · 1h 41m · Comedy · Drama
Director Calmatic
- Sinqua Walls — Kamal Allen
- Jack Harlow — Jeremy
- Teyana Taylor — Imani
- Calmatic directed the 2023 remake from a screenplay by Kenya Barris and Doug Hall, with Jack Harlow making his feature-film acting debut.
- Sinqua Walls and Harlow play Kamal and Jeremy, a new pair of Los Angeles streetball partners rather than direct copies of Sidney and Billy.
01
The Take
The remake knows it cannot simply copy Billy and Sidney, so it gives Jeremy and Kamal more explicit injury, family and career baggage. The problem is that explanation cannot replace chemistry. There are good individual moments and a recognisable LA basketball world, but the original's hustles felt like characters revealing themselves through the game itself.
02
Does the Basketball Hold Up?
The modern version updates training, recovery and tournament aesthetics while keeping pickup money and status at the centre. Sinqua Walls carries credible physicality, and the Venice basketball setting helps, but the games rarely produce the spontaneous competitive tension that made the 1992 film feel overheard rather than staged.
03
Best Basketball Moment
The tournament stretches where the remake stops servicing backstory and lets the two leads solve possessions together, briefly approaching the basketball chemistry its title demands.
04
Ball Cred
The production shot tournament material in Venice and deliberately positions itself as a modern retelling of the Los Angeles streetball-hustling culture behind Ron Shelton's original.