Uncle Drew is a movie that originated as a series of Pepsi commercials. That sentence alone made me hesitant to want to get excited about this movie. I like a good sports movie every now and again but I’m also aware that most sports movies are guilty of portraying tons of tropes and basic underdog plot stories that have been done to death. One of the more common sports movies are about basketball. There are only a few good basketball movies out there and after seeing Uncle Drew I can safely say that it doesn’t meet the qualifications for a good basketball movie.
Uncle Drew is about a streetball team coach and Foot Locker employee named Dax (Lil Rel Howery). Dax’s arch rival Mookie (Nick Kroll) steals his team and Dax has to put together a new team. By chance Dax witnesses streetball legend and elderly Uncle Drew (Kyrie Irving) beating someone much younger than him at basketball. Dax recruits Uncle Drew and they hit the road to put Uncle Drew’s old streetball team from the late ’60s back togethe
So far Lil Rel is best known for playing the comic relief in last year’s Get Out (2017). He was really funny in that movie and he brings the same charisma to Uncle Drew. Unfortunately his performance isn’t enough to save the movie from being just another bland trope filled sports movie. Kyrie Irving is decent as Uncle Drew and I wouldn’t mind seeing him play a regular role in a non-comedy movie. I’m not usually a big fan of professional athlete’s or famous musicians getting into movies because most of them can’t act, but Irving showed enough here where it would be interesting to see him do something else.
As a full on comedy Uncle Drew is fairly funny. I certainly laughed a few times but those laughs were way too few and far between. The plot of this movie and how it plays out is just so uninspired and lazy. I was hoping for it to do something interesting but all it really had that was somewhat original is putting really good professional basketball players in old people makeup.
I wanted to give Uncle Drew a chance but it just doesn’t work. It’s a shame too because this has been a pretty good year for comedy movies with things like Game Night, Blockers, and Tag coming out. None of those three movies are great films but all three at least have original plots. Uncle Drew on the other hand just feels like recycled sports movie ideas with not one original plot point. I don’t hate the gimmicky idea of the basketball players wearing old people makeup but it is an idea that probably should have never gone beyond being just a series of commercials.
Dave’s Rating- ★★½(2½) out of ★★★★★(5)
